Talk:Phineas Gage

Review of content issues

Since the formatting has been largely dealt with, let's hammer out some content issues. Do not split into this list and blow them up into a mess, for this is part of my review of what should be done before the article should become a GA.

Issues list recapitulated below in List "A"

Background "He may have gained skill with explosives on his family's farms or in nearby mines and quarries..." Speculation from Macmillan. Attribute it. Gage's date of birth in the infobox is not covered here when it should be covered and noted in proper context of its sourcing. Gage's accident Does not address numerous theories presented or Gage's actions prior to accident. EEng knows all too well this subject. I think Ratiu and Van Horn's material needs to be pointed out because the evidence shows that Gage had his mouth open and was speaking at the time the rod passed through his skull. I do not know why this is absent. I have issues with the section, but I'll hold off on the excessive quoting and measurement issues for now. Subsequent life and travels "abt. February he was able to do a little work abt. ye horses & barn, feedg. ye cattle &c; that as ye time for ploughing came he was able to do half a days work after that & bore it well." - Paraphrase. Would Gage's mental impairment belong here? I think it would be helpful. Missing Gage's time in New Hampshire prior to Chile. Chile and California is missing the account of Gage's doctor and missing some other tidbits, not too bad - but everything related to his mental improvement and the regaining of normalcy in his life is absent without reason. This is also the key section that Macmillan's research becomes quite useful as a case argument. Death and subsequent travels Still glaringly missing the details surrounding his return home, illness and death. Also, the exhumation details - which was in Fleischman's book - is entirely absent. This little episode in the Gage story is something which is important. Other matters Analysis and actual examination of the claims and details surrounding Gage and his role in science has been well- mostly avoided by the article. Instead of proper detailing of the injury and Gage's role in history. Only a few hundred words on Gage's mental impairments were written yet lengthy quotes are used. Using "passim" and other issues in citing Macmillan is also a cop-out and would merit a verifiability failure. Not even that, it doesn't even credit Macmillan when it should. Notes A substantial part of the text is hidden away in these notes. These complex, rambling, and citation filled messes that only make verification more tedious. A note like "V" which reads " See Macmillan & Lena;[34]:9 Harlow;[12]:332,345 Bigelow;[11]:16–17 Harlow;[9]:390 Macmillan.[1]:86" is just improper. Note X - "Macmillan's book provides one of those rare occasions on which one can truly say that further research is not necessary ... the definitive account ..."[57]" - is just the type of note we do not need. There is a lot of issues that remain - but the next biggest is the Notes issue. It comprises a substantial amount of the non-quote text and should be easiest to rectify. Though I figure the content issues might be easier under the current situation... ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:43, 3 September 2014 (UTC) Now this is the kind of approach to discussion I like. What we need to do is find a way to keep track of all these issues, discuss them (separately or in clusters -- whatever works best in various cases), then figure out how to implement what we decide, etc. Now, I really have to get to work now (sometimes I go to work in the middle of the night -- quieter, no distractions) but let me quickly suggest the following. Would you mind if, later, I reorder these to bring related issues together, maybe group them into headings, and number them? Then it can be a kind of master checklist while we open separate discussion threads on each issue or cluster, referring to them by number, etc. As new issues come up we can add them under the appropriate heading in the list, and come back to it later if need be. Also, if we get stuck on something (e.g. "Need to get book X at library" or "EEng and CG decided to take a break on this one before they kill each other") we can just note that in the list as the status for that issue, and switch to another issues for a while. Would that be OK? I'd like to be the one to set up this organization, just because (I hope you will agree) I have a better mastery of all the "moving parts" in the Gage story and how they fit together. In the meantime though, if you're eager to get started ASAP, let me ask you about two of your points so far: "Missing Gage's time in New Hampshire prior to Chile." See, already here I wish I could just say "re Issue A3" or something. Can you say more what you'd like to see on this? "Still glaringly missing the details surrounding his return home, illness and death" -- same question. EEng (talk) 07:42, 3 September 2014 (UTC) P.S. I may have little chance to interact tmw, but this is a good start -- let's keep our cool and preserve it. I rather not have them reordered or anything like that. For Gage's time in New Hampshire, didn't he spent 18 months in a horse stable? I don't know what you mean by "re-issue A3", but he was in Chile for about 7 years, correct? Then he returned and rested for awhile before becoming a farm laborer - I'm not sure if this is on one or several farms, but wasn't the convulsions following a day's labor on the farm? The seizures became worse and he was treated prior to his death, but these details are absent. That's my concern about that. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 14:11, 3 September 2014 (UTC) OK, no reordering. But can we give them designations, like this? I'm calling it "List A" so we can start a new list later without confusion. If you don't like it we'll work something else out, but we really need some way to refer to issues without saying, "Hey, getting back to that thing we were talking about, the bit where it says that Gage was traveling, not the bit about the time when he blah blah blah." One point: we absolutely cannot refer to "Note X" and "Ref 22" and so on. These designations shift around as the article is edited and we will go completely crazy. In the below, I've substituted permalinks instead.

Issues list "A"

• A1 Background

• A1a  Done A1a Attribute speculation

  "He may have gained skill with explosives on his family's farms or in nearby mines and quarries..." Speculation from Macmillan. Attribute it.

• A1b  Done Gage's date of birth in the infobox is not covered here when it should be covered and noted in proper context of its sourcing.

It's fully detailed in note "b" [4]. I'm closing this subject to reopening if someone cares. EEng (talk) 00:49, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

• A2 Gage's accident

• A2a  Done Does not address numerous theories presented or Gage's actions prior to accident. EEng knows all too well this subject. I think Ratiu and Van Horn's material needs to be pointed out because the evidence shows that Gage had his mouth open and was speaking at the time the rod passed through his skull. I do not know why this is absent. I have issues with the section, but I'll hold off on the excessive quoting and measurement issues for now.

The only "numerous theories presented [on?] Gage's actions prior to the accident" is the uncertainty re whether he was sitting or standing, which I don't think is worth bothering the reader with. That Gage's mouth was open (whether he was actually speaking cannot be established) is given in the caption on the right halfway through the Accident section [5]. I'm boldly marking this done, but anyone please feel free to reopen. EEng (talk) 00:02, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

• A3 Subsequent life and travels

• A3a  Done A3a Paraphrase

  "abt. February he was able to do a little work abt. ye horses & barn, feedg. ye cattle &c; that as ye time for ploughing came he was able to do half a days work after that & bore it well." - Paraphrase.

• A3b  Done A3b Mental impairment goes here?

  Would Gage's mental impairment belong here? I think it would be helpful.

• A3c  Done Missing Gage's time in New Hampshire prior to Chile.
• A3d  Done A3d, A3e Subsequent life and travels

  Chile and California is missing the account of Gage's doctor and missing some other tidbits, not too bad - but everything related to his mental improvement and the regaining of normalcy in his life is absent without reason.

• A3e  Done A3d, A3e Subsequent life and travels

  This is also the key section that Macmillan's research becomes quite useful as a case argument.

• A4 Death and subsequent travels

• A4a  Done Still glaringly missing the details surrounding his return home, illness and death.
• A4b Also, the exhumation details - which was in Fleischman's book - is entirely absent. This little episode in the Gage story is something which is important.

• For the 100th time, this is a children's book, according to the publisher's own data [6]: "Grade Level: 4,5,6 Age Range: 9,10,11,12". Another editor's recurring claims that it's "peer-reviewed" (because the author thanks Dr. X and Dr. Y for checking the anatomical statements, and Macmillan for general assistance) are absurd. There's no debating this.
• And no, "this little episode in the Gage story" is not "something which is important". Here's what it says:

With her son-in-law and the mayor of San Francisco, who happens to be a physician, standing by as witnesses, Phineas's coffin is uncovered and carried to a shed. There, Dr. J.D.B. Stillman, a local surgeon, removes the skull. The huge fracture on the forehead is unmistakable. Dr. Stillman removes something else from the coffin -- the tamping iron that Phineas carried everywhere, even to his grave.

These details are cited to nothing, complete fiction, and utterly trivial.

• Tfish, I'd like your explicit concurrence, based on the link above, so we can quit wasting time on this. EEng (talk) 02:34, 8 December 2014 (UTC) I repeat that, as a science book for kids, Fleischman does a wonderful job, and I thoroughly recommend it if you have any kids, nieces, or nephews in the right age range.

<bump> EEng (talk) 08:11, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Monthly bump. EEng (talk) 03:18, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

• A5 Other matters

• A5a Analysis and actual examination of the claims and details surrounding Gage and his role in science has been well- mostly avoided by the article. Instead of proper detailing of the injury and Gage's role in history.

To the extent I can tell what this is talking about, it's covered in the Theoretical use section [7]. (Within that, the Cerebral localization subsection should certainly be expanded, and if instead of waiting for me to do it someone wants to research that and help with it, please pitch in.) Other than the cerebral localization debate Gage didn't have a role in science, and I don't know what "proper detailing of the injury" means. EEng (talk) 03:20, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Tfish, is this OK with you? EEng (talk) 08:11, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Monthly bump. EEng (talk) 03:18, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

• A5b  Done A5b, A5d Other matters

  Only a few hundred words on Gage's mental impairments were written yet lengthy quotes are used.

• A5c  Done A5c Passim etc

   Done Using "passim" and other issues in citing Macmillan is also a cop-out and would merit a verifiability failure.

• A5d  Done A5b, A5d Other matters

  Not even that, it doesn't even credit Macmillan when it should.

• A6 Notes

• A6a Discussion underway belowA6a Too much text hidden in notes

  A substantial part of the text is hidden away in these notes. These complex, rambling, and citation filled messes that only make verification more tedious.

•  Done A6b Complex callouts

  A note like [8] which reads " See Macmillan & Lena;[34]:9 Harlow;[12]:332,345 Bigelow;[11]:16–17 Harlow;[9]:390 Macmillan.[1]:86" is just improper.

• A6c  Done Note [9] - "Macmillan's book provides one of those rare occasions on which one can truly say that further research is not necessary ... the definitive account ..."[57]" - is just the type of note we do not need.

Well, it was needed, because you objected that the word comprehensive (describing Macmillan's survey of accounts of Gage) wasn't supported. Since then that passage has been rewritten to eliminate that point, rendering the question moot. EEng (talk) 19:42, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

• There is a lot of issues that remain - but the next biggest is the Notes issue. It comprises a substantial amount of the non-quote text and should be easiest to rectify.

• A7 Discussion underway below Image links
• A8  Done Cavendish, Vermont 1869 Map
• A9  Done Proving a negative
• A10  Done "poor form to footnote a quote's reference to another quote with the quote and that quote's citation"

A1a Attribute so-called speculation

Extended content

It's not speculation, but a statement of liklihood synthesized by one source based on appropriate other sources -- explosives were routinely used on farms throughout Hew Hampshire, and in Grafton Co. specifically mining was an important industry in which local men and boys were employed. Regardless, it is attributed already, via inline citation. You seem to be asking for in-text citation ("Macmillan writes that Gage may have gained skill...") but that's not only not required, it's unnecessary for a point like this, which is completely uncontentious -- there's no one saying, "I disagree. There's little chance Gage learned to work with exposives as a farmboy, because..." EEng (talk) 04:45, 11 September 2014 (UTC) Anyone have any comment? I'd prefer to close each of these issues on a consensus. EEng (talk) 05:26, 19 September 2014 (UTC) I'm going to try to respond to your "bumps" here, especially because Chris said at COIN that he might be stepping away from this page. My preference is to go with inline cites, and not with "MacMillan says...", so I'm OK with the status quo. It does not strike me as particularly speculative, but a suggestion I can make is to change "skill" to "experience", because the prior experiences referred to do not necessarily imply a high level of skill, and so the one aspect of the sentence that might be speculative is about that skill level. After all, the very fact of the famous accident raises at least a little bit of dubiousness about his "skill". --Tryptofish (talk) 21:26, 19 September 2014 (UTC) We'll discuss your bumps further, if you like, when we get more into the article's coverage of phrenology. EEng (talk) 06:11, 25 September 2014 (UTC) Who said they were on my head? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:17, 25 September 2014 (UTC) Oops, I should have said my bumps. EEng (talk) 23:20, 25 September 2014 (UTC) and now lady lumps, ffs! Martinevans123 (talk) 21:27, 25 September 2014 (UTC) ..... "gotta get this metal bar outta my head!!" Honestly, Martin, you always crack me up. EEng (talk) 23:20, 25 September 2014 (UTC) You're making a kind of res ipsa loquitur argument, and it's not an unreasonable one, but (surprise!) there's a good deal that tells us why it doesn't apply to Gage and his accident. For the moment, take a look at [10] and this new tidbit about Gage's work on an earlier rail project near NYC [11]. Then tell me what you think. I'm glad you're persevering. EEng (talk) 04:55, 20 September 2014 (UTC) My argument is purely mea nasum prurit, and I don't really care that much. I think what you are citing shows that he gained skill from earlier railway work, as opposed to, for example, growing up on a farm. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:12, 20 September 2014 (UTC) Somehow [12] seems just right. Without worrying about exactly when he became skilled (in the sense of better-than-common skill) the employers' praise later is enough to cover that. EEng (talk) 06:11, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

A3a Paraphrase archaic language

Extended content

Why? A paraphrase would be longer, no more informative, dull, and forego the opportunity to educate the reader at multiple levels. Others' comments? EEng (talk) 05:26, 26 September 2014 (UTC) I guess the issue was that the abbreviations and "ye" come across as quaint, and that it might be better to summarize in present-day English. I can see some merit to that, but it's not a big issue for me. Could you please expand on the "multiple levels"? Perhaps if I could see what those are, I could provide a better response in terms of the trade-off between helping the reader with those levels of understanding, versus helping the reader with a smoother read. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:02, 26 September 2014 (UTC) Merely that, in addition to informing the reader about Gage's continuing recuperation, it gives a window into what private notes and correspondence (between intimates, anyway) of the day looked like. Naturally, smooth reading is always to be striven for (everything else equal) but here, with just a little extra effort the reader has the fun of decoding the doctor's quaint notes for himself. I especially like that using Jackson's original words enhances the image of him scribbling things down even as Gage's mom was speaking to him (which is apparently what happened). It's weird how some people (and I don't mean you) think that any evidence that the writer went out of his way to increase the reader's pleasure must for some reason be rooted out and destroyed. EEng (talk) 22:32, 26 September 2014 (UTC)p OK, that's good enough for me, no need to paraphrase. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:35, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

A3b Mental impairment goes here?

Extended content
As explained elsewhere, the biographical sections only outline where Gage went and things he did. Mental changes are discussed later, don't help the reader understand the bio material any better, and would interrupt its presentation to no advantage. EEng (talk) 05:26, 26 September 2014 (UTC) That's OK with me. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:07, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

A3c For Gage's time in New Hampshire, didn't he spent 18 months in a horse stable?

Extended content

The article says Gage subsequently worked for the owner of a livery and coach service in Hanover, New Hampshire Harlow says this began sometime in 1851 and, "He remained there, without any interruption from ill health, for nearly or quite a year and a half." This fits with JMH's (JHM = John Martyn Harlow) information that PG went to Chile in August 1852. How about if we change it to For about eighteen months he worked for the owner of a livery and coach service in Hanover, New Hampshire Thoughts? EEng (talk) 17:18, 3 September 2014 (UTC) Yes, that works. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 13:53, 6 September 2014 (UTC)  Done EEng (talk) 17:10, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

A3d, A3e Subsequent life and travels

Extended content

I don't know what is meant by "Chile and California ... account of Gage's doctor ... other tidbits" is talking about. There's nothing published about Gage's doctors in Chile and California. As to "everything related to his mental impairment [etc]": the biographical sections simply follows where Gage went and what he did in those places. Everything about mental changes is discussed later in the "Brain damage and mental changes" sections, and that's done for a very good reason: discussion of Gage's mental changes jumps around in time, and requires an understanding of Gage's biographical framework to make sense. EEng (talk) 05:55, 19 September 2014 (UTC) I have no idea what "Macmillan's research ... as a case argument" means. Anyone have any ideas? I don't know. Given that we don't know, I don't see a need to add content now. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:28, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

A4a missing details surrounding return home, illness and death

Extended content

"but he was in Chile for about 7 years, correct? Then he returned and rested for awhile before becoming a farm laborer - I'm not sure if this is on one or several farms, but wasn't the convulsions following a day's labor on the farm? The seizures became worse and he was treated prior to his death, but these details are absent." -- Points raised by ChrisGualtieri What the article currently says about this is... In August 1852, Gage was invited to Chile to work as a long-distance stagecoach driver there, "caring for horses, and often driving a coach heavily laden and drawn by six horses" on the Valparaiso–Santiago route. ... After his health began to fail, in mid-1859, he left Chile for San Francisco, where he recovered under the care of his mother and sister, who had relocated there from New Hampshire around the time Gage went to Chile. Then, "anxious to work", he worked for a farmer in Santa Clara. In February 1860, Gage had the first in a series of increasingly severe convulsions; he died status epilepticus" in or near San Francisco on May 21 Harlow says Gage "had been ploughing the day before he had the first attack; got better in a few days, and continued to work in various places;' could not do much, changing often, 'and always finding something which did not suit him in every place he tried.' On May 18, 1860, three days before his death, he left Santa Clara and went home to his mother. At 5 A.M. on May 20, he had a severe convulsion. The family physician was called in, and bled him. The convulsions were repeated frequently during the succeeding day and night, and he expired at 10, P.M., May 21" This is quoted in one of the footnotes you hate so much [13] so how about if we change the last bit to say... In February 1860, Gage had several convulsions, and lost his job. For three months he "continued to work in various places [but] could not do much." On May 18 he "went home to his mother. The family physician was called in, and bled him. The convulsions were repeated frequently during the succeeding day and night," and he died status epilepticus‍ in or near San Francisco on May 21 Then we can dispense with the footnote. Yipee! What do you think? EEng (talk) 17:18, 3 September 2014 (UTC) This also works well. I do not have an issue with footnotes that dispel very important and prominent errors or require editorial comments to the readers. The editorial comment part being the being most important here. I got my first workings with this in Ghost in the Shell (film) where the first note was about "The Wachowskis", previously known as the "Wachowski brothers" due to repeated editors changing actual quotes and text as revisionist historians would. The second illuminates a censored line critical to understanding the text, but most English audiences would be unaware of the original and hence the requirement of a footnote. The text should be entirely readable and clear without reading a single footnote, because footnotes are there to inform in cases of doubt or confusion to a highly specific matter instead of a general additive note. Additive footnotes should not be footnotes at all. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 14:17, 6 September 2014 (UTC)  Done Done, though with some small changes -- please take a look. EEng (talk) 17:10, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

A5b, A5d Other matters

Extended content

Anyone have any ideas what this is suggesting in terms of changes to the article? EEng (talk) 05:55, 19 September 2014 (UTC) Again, I don't know. The only thing I can think of would be to convert quotations to paraphrases, and I think that would probably be a step in the wrong direction. It does not seem to me that the page has too little material about this topic. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:31, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

A5c Passim etc

Extended content

I've changed the two passims to a specific page and chapter #s. Can you explain about the "other issues in citing Macmillan"? EEng (talk) 07:03, 4 September 2014 (UTC) " Gage had also (writes psychologist Malcolm Macmillan) ..." is poor writing and it references two separate publications for the same quote. Adding confusion as to which the quote is found within. Then within the quote, there are modifications which diminish the quotes impact so that plain paraphrasing would work better. And due to multiple publications by Macmillan, the year of the publication should be noted in the text to prevent confusion. As Macmillan's theory has developed over time. Entire sentences like "Attributes typically ascribed to the post-accident Gage which are either unsupported by, or in contradiction to...." are not cited inline as per WP:MINREF. Many of these issues spill over to the footnotes sections as well. Which we should deal with as noted above. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 14:25, 6 September 2014 (UTC) The "Attributes typically ascribed..." passage has needed cites for a long time, so (since you brought it up) I took a few hours to add them [14]. Regarding giving publication years, do you mean they should be supplied everywhere? Wouldn't it be better to add them only in specific places they would help the reader understand some particular point? EEng (talk) 06:32, 8 September 2014 (UTC) Just a followup to note that after I added the cites he complained were missing, CG said that I was "ref bombing" the article. [15] EEng (talk) 05:26, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

A6a Too much text hidden in notes

I think that this point is worth addressing explicitly. I agree with the subjective parts of it. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:29, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't need to tell you when material goes in a note: when its potential value to some readers is outweighed by the distraction to most readers of including it in the main text. So all we have to do is decide which pan of the scales is heavier, for each note. (A third option, of course is -- as with all content -- to just drop it completely. However, IMO, a very convincing case would have to be made for the removal of all but the most obviously valueless content that's in a note -- in addition to NOTPAPER, there's the added point that, again, notes material comes at the very end of the article, and doesn't interrupt or clutter the main text.)

As usual, I've got some old thoughts on shelf which your comment prompts me to bring out from the shadows. There are at least a few notes which I think might be candidates for integration into the main text (with various adjustments, some bits scattered elsewhere, and so on). Note I use permalinks, without which reference to "Note A", "Note B" etc. will eventually make us crazy as the article evolves.

•  Done [16] (Note C) I think this could be a new section at the very end of the article, "Contemporary receptions" or something.
•  Done [17] (Note W) Move into main text?
•  Done [18] (Note H) This is an example of something which, in principle, could be moved into the main text as a parenthetical. However, the point at which the note is invoked is very near the beginning of the article and therefore, I think, a bad place to add weight like this. However, it might fit really well as a parenthetical at the very end of the "Early observations" section, I just noticed.
•  Done [19] (Note J) The first sentence is an excellent example of material that (a) needs to be in the article somewhere, since it explains a correction to a direct quote; yet (b) really only acts as a matter of record, and serves all but the most esoterically-minded reader not at all. However, the rest of Note J, together with Note N  Done [20], might make a new section on something like "Factors favoring Gage's survival/Harlow's treatment" or something. But offhand I don't see any really good way of organizing that, or where to put it.

Thoughts? EEng (talk) 05:27, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Here are my thoughts. I'm quite receptive to analyzing these issues according to your very useful metaphor of a scale, which strikes me as a good way to think about it. It seems to me, and please understand that I am saying this in good faith, that part of what is going on here is that you are putting a thumb on the scale, not because of any bad faith on your part, but because you are so close to the writing of the page that it pains you to consider shortening anything that you have labored over. I do think that just dropping some things completely is appropriate here. But I'm willing to simply say that, for now, while acceding to your preferences, for now, not to delete any of it. That way, you know what I think, but I'm not pushing you where you are uncomfortable going. Is that fair?

I've looked at each of those notes, and in every case, I'm in favor of moving them into the main text, and then assessing where we stand. I'd welcome you going ahead with that, for every note that you listed here. For some of them, it sounds like you know where you'd like to put them. For the others, I agree with you that it's best not to put the material too early in the text. For the J–N material where you are unsure, I would suggest putting it around where the page discusses Harlow's treatment, not necessarily in a new sub-section, and without worrying about whether it makes the existing section long. Then, let's step back, take a deep breath, and contemplate how that looks. I'm probably going to argue that most of the relocated material is just fine, maybe after a little tweaking for paragraph flow. I'm also probably going to argue that some of the material is just too much – but there are multiple options available to us if/when that happens: (1) you tell me you adamantly disagree, in which case I'll probably just say OK, (2) we agree to prune it, or (3) we move those smaller bits back into notes, but the notes will end up being simpler than they are now.

In a more general sense, where you refer to the side of the scale that reflects not distracting most readers, my experience as a reader myself is that such distraction can also be avoided by just skipping over passages that don't interest me. The material doesn't necessarily need to have been moved out of the way, into notes. But if it has been moved into notes, I'm likely to ignore it, so that means that it is not essential. Keeping in mind that this is the English Wikipedia and not a scholarly treatise, it seems to me that references and notes are, first, about verifiability, and not about giving the reader every source that exists. So we don't have to give readers every existing source, just enough sources to make the text pass WP:V. Of course, I would never argue that we cannot offer more than the minimum sourcing, because additional sourcing can be helpful to our readers. But I think that we can consider WP:CITEKILL without doing our readers any disservice.

And something else: it is also distracting to a reader to, first, be directed to a lettered note, and, then, be redirected to a numbered source. For the reader, that's a multi-step process. When we can, instead, make it a single step going to the numbered source, we need to really have some added value if we make the reader go through an extra step.

I want to add some more notes to the list that we are scrutinizing. Using this [21] version of the page, these are notes K Done, U Not done [see below], V Done, Y Done, and AC Done. I picked these notes because the text within the notes is pretty much expendable, and they could each be converted into numbered inline cites, without needing the notes. I also think that notes F Done, L Not done [see below], Q Done, R Done, T Done, and W Done are short notes where it would be easy to move a bit of material into the main text and no longer need the notes.

--Tryptofish (talk) 21:26, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Authorial Vanity

Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.

Logan Pearsall Smith (1931). Afterthoughts.

• I fully understand re author's blindness and (let's face it) vanity. I'm pretty sure I've trotted out one of my favorite aphorisms (see right) in at least one discussion we've shared in the past.
• Beyond that... quickly... I predict you will find I agree with much more of what you say than you probably imagine I do, though it's all in the definitions and subjectives that the rubber meets the road, of course.
• But let me jump right in and take care of some of the first group. I'm going to get interruptions, so it will be sporadic. EEng (talk) 23:44, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! That is excellent! Although it may perhaps be "the padded cell of the beast". --Tryptofish (talk) 23:48, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Are you joking about beast/breast? (A "beast/breast jest", as it were)? EEng (talk) 20:32, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

As you see, I've done a few, and though some rough bits need smoothing I think it's all for the best. Continuing to add ideas I've been thinking for awhile about how to expand "Theoretical use, misuse, and nonuse". This is complicated (a) because of the complexity of the underlying theoretical frameworks (localization in its various flavors, inhibitory theories, etc. -- and I am far from an expert on this stuff); and (b) because while most of these theoretical uses of Gage were for now-defunct theories, Ferrier was right about locatization; but (c) Ferrier was mistaken in using Gage to illustrate his (correct) thesis. (Warning: oversimplified summary!) So there are a lot needles to thread there.

Anyway, assuming we can figure out how to handle that, I thought that the paragraph beginning "Thus in the nineteenth-century" could become two or more subsections: Phrenology (which could absorb Note Z Done -- working from your same permalink!) and Localization (which could absorb Q Done -- not mentioned there yet is that the woodcuts were sent to England years later, so Ferrier could use them in his lectures on location), and maybe more.

I have a heave week coming up so progress will be sporadic. EEng (talk) 18:42, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Heave week: 1. (medical, rare) A week during which the patient vomits continually. 2. (commerce) A week during which much cargo must be loaded quickly, as in "Heave - HO!". 3. (civil engineering) The worst part of the winter, during which the greatest number of potholes appear on paved roads, due to heaving caused by the freeze-thaw cycle. 4. (higher education) Rush week. 20:32, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

It looks good to me, and there's no hurry. Thanks again. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:45, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Close?

Can we close this?

• Note U (this version [22]: I see no sensible way of working into the text (it's just too boring) but this info really should remain somewhere in the article.
• Note L: There's a serious problem with the content here (19C medical meaning of fungus) which will need some quiet research to finish resolving. At that point we can take this us again. Trust me, I won't forget.
• Anything else can be taken up in new threads of their own.

OK? EEng (talk) 23:20, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

<bump> EEng (talk) 08:07, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Monthly bump. EEng (talk) 03:18, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

A6b Complex callouts

Extended content

Original complaint: A note like [23] which reads " See Macmillan & Lena;[34]:9 Harlow;[12]:332,345 Bigelow;[11]:16–17 Harlow;[9]:390 Macmillan.[1]:86" is just improper. As explained at WP:CITEBUNDLE, "Sometimes the article is more readable if multiple citations are bundled into a single footnote." In fact, inspired by a review of CITEBUNDLE's examples, I've now given the very ugly citations in the passage on behaviors attributed to Gage the same treatment [24]. I hope you agree it looks a lot better this way. EEng (talk) 03:15, 12 September 2014 (UTC) Anyone have any comment? EEng (talk) 05:26, 19 September 2014 (UTC) My comment is that I, too, dislike those kinds of citations. I'd rather just see a string of inline citations, like: [1][2][3][4]. So shoot me. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:35, 19 September 2014 (UTC) Sorry, bullets are too valuable to waste on minor annoyances, though some arrows will be coming in soon and I guess I could deliver the coup de grace with one of those. In the meantime... I agree that [1][2][3][4] is best left as is. But what about -- Way old version comparison Attributes and behaviors ascribed to the post-accident Gage which are either unsupported by, or in contradiction to, the known facts include mistreatment of wife and children (of which Gage had neither); inappropriate sexual behavior, promiscuity, or impaired sexuality; lack of forethought, concern for the future, or embarassment; parading his self-misery, and vainglory in showing his wounds; inability or refusal to hold a job; irresponsibility and untrustworthiness; vagrancy and begging; aggressiveness and violence; plus drifting drinking, bragging, lying, brawling, bullying, psychopathy, inability to make ethical decisions, loss of all respect for social conventions, and acting "like an idiot". -- should it be left that way? Or is it better like this -- Behaviors ascribed to the post-accident Gage which are either unsupported by, or in contradiction to, the known facts include mistreatment of wife and children (of which Gage had neither); inappropriate sexual behavior, promiscuity, or impaired sexuality; lack of forethought, concern for the future, or embarassment; parading his self-misery, and vainglory in showing his wounds; inability or refusal to hold a job; irresponsibility and untrustworthiness; vagrancy and begging; aggressiveness and violence; plus drifting, drinking, bragging, lying, brawling, bullying, psychopathy, inability to make ethical decisions, loss of all respect for social conventions, and acting "like an idiot". Notes X. Sources attributing behaviors to Gage, or discussing or falsifying these attributions: wife and children sexuality; lack of forethought/​​concern/​​embarassment, parading self-misery, vainglory; employment inability; employment refusal irresponsibility, untrustworthiness; vagrancy, begging; aggressiveness, violence; drifting; drinking; bragging; lying; brawling; bullying; psychopathy; ethical decisions, social conventions, "idiot". (current version) --? (The two versions are diffed at [25].) Please note that I was inspired to investigate guidelines' suggestions for such situations after another editor first complained that refs were missing, then after I added them [26] (in a classic damned-if-I-do) complained that I'd "started ref bombing the text into an unreadable state" [27]. I'd like to hear how other editors think this might be handled better. EEng (talk) 00:51, 26 September 2014 (UTC) Looking at those two options gives me a headache. Unless there is something particularly contentious in the middle of the paragraph (please point it out to me if there is), then what I would prefer is a third option, that has all the citations at the end of the paragraph, where "X" is in the second example, but instead of creating a complex "note X", just have a long series of superscript notes at the end of the paragraph – more than the [1][2][3][4] example I gave, but the same idea, with a cite for each source that is contained in "note X". That way, we neither interrupt the paragraph needlessly, nor end up with a needlessly complex note. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:16, 26 September 2014 (UTC) What, like this? Another way old version comparison Behaviors ascribed to the post-accident Gage which are either unsupported by, or in contradiction to, the known facts include mistreatment of wife and children (of which Gage had neither); inappropriate sexual behavior, promiscuity, or impaired sexuality; lack of forethought, concern for the future, or embarassment; parading his self-misery, and vainglory in showing his wounds; inability or refusal to hold a job; irresponsibility and untrustworthiness; vagrancy and begging; aggressiveness and violence; plus drifting, drinking, bragging, lying, brawling, bullying, psychopathy, inability to make ethical decisions, loss of all respect for social conventions, and acting "like an idiot".​ Surely you jest -- WP:INTEGRITY. Remember, we're discussing here conflicts of sources, and I think it's necessary to be specific about which sources relate to which point. EEng (talk) 00:50, 27 September 2014 (UTC) Well, no, I wasn't jesting. But – OMG! – this is why so many editors react as I do to trying to edit this page. There are two issues, so let's treat them individually. The first is where you cite WP:INTEGRITY. We are dealing here with a single sentence of main text (as astonishing as it is to me to realize it). It isn't necessary to differentiate the sources for vainglory from those for bragging. It isn't. Having the sources at the end of the sentence is acceptable with respect to INTEGRITY in this case. The second point is that there are, sorry, a shitload of sources cited. Some of this can (and should have been) addressed by not repeating the same source multiple times, which you did in your example here. By my tedious count, you are citing reference numbers 1, 2, 8, 41, 42, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, and 82. That's still an amazingly large number. But you repeat many of these numerous times, so if we have them as a group at the end of the sentence, it will be less overwhelming than you made it look once each numbered reference appears only once at the end of this sentence. Then, we might want to consider WP:CITEKILL. Maybe we don't need to cite all of these – maybe, instead, just the best one or two for each of the behaviors. That would shorten it a little more. And, perhaps (I'm not sure), not all the page numbers are needed, very likely just one page per behavior at least. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:27, 27 September 2014 (UTC) Well, collapsing all the duplicates doesn't do very much (here not bothering to put the pg #s in order). Ref [1] is 600 pages (and the others with pg #s are longer papers) so the pg #s are necessary. As for the number of cites per behavior, there are generally two, and need to be two: one for where the behavior is asserted, and one for where the non-behavior is discussed. Even in places where (in Note X) it looks like there are more than two cites per behavior e.g. -- sexuality; -- in fact if you look at the main text there are actually three different behaviors -- inappropriate sexual behavior, promiscuity, or impaired sexuality; -- so in fact there's one cite for each behavior, plus a combined place where they're discussed. In maybe 5 cases there's a spare cite that can be dropped. So, even before reaching the question of whether it's acceptable to pour all the cites into a pile for compactness, IMO the compactness isn't nearly compact enough, and it looks awful. I just don't get what the objection is to using notes for these auxiliary purposes. It's one of the things they're for -- getting potentially distracting stuff out of the main text, yet leaving it available for those interested. EEng (talk) 03:58, 28 September 2014 (UTC) In part, it can be made a little bit better by not repeating the same page numbers for reference 1. Fix that, and we get. But, looking at the page, I see that a very large number of these references are cited only at this one place on the page. That buys us a lot of simplification. Create one inline citation (not formatted as a lettered note, but as a numbered citation) at number 60 (the first of those that are cited only once), and place within it what are now the other such cites, numbers 61, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, and 82. (For what that looks like, see for example Animal rights#Notes, where there are several examples, with note 89 being a good one.) The remaining citations above number 60 would then be renumbered (so 62 becomes 61, 64 becomes 62, 75 becomes 63, and 83 becomes 64). And that gives us this. Taking it one step further, create one more new inline citation, at number 64 (it could be number 60, actually, but I don't feel like renumbering what I just wrote). In 64, link back to citation number one, but give the page numbers in the inline citation. And that gives us this. All of this is done without any lettered notes, without overly cluttering the page, and without eliminating any of the source or page information (even though I suspect that you protest too much in regard to WP:CITEKILL). Problem solved. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:50, 28 September 2014 (UTC) What is our goal here? Can you remind me again what problem we were solving (relative to the "Note X" approach)? EEng (talk) 21:56, 28 September 2014 (UTC) How disappointing. You know perfectly well, but you just don't want to do it. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:40, 29 September 2014 (UTC) Watch it, or I'll have you at ANI for violating AGF. Shall I template you? Anyway, I'm utterly serious. I thought we were looking into alternatives to the Note-X-lettered-note approach, and one alternative we've come up with is the put-all-the-singleton-sources-in-one-numbered-callout-and-compress-the-rest-to-a-smaller-but-still-quite-a-mouthfull-at-the-end-of-the-sentence approach, and while each has its plusses and minuses I don't see that any "problem" is being solved by moving from one to the other. AFAICS it's just a question of preferences -- not that preferences don't matter, since aesthetics matter in improving an article. If I'm wrong, and there really is a problem, please say what it is -- really, if there is one I didn't pick that up. Having said that, getting this deep into the details of citations and such brings us into intersection with an old outstanding to-do, which was to restore the rationalization of the presentation of the sources (so they're not a gigantic jumble in accidental order) which had been discussed at Talk:Phineas_Gage/Archive_3#Citations, implemented in a not very good way, and later removed by you-know-who. I fear you'll find that discussion quite long. Anyway, I think it's best to suspend this until that's done, so we can continue in that context. EEng (talk) 21:39, 29 September 2014 (UTC) "I fear you'll find that discussion quite long." So, what else is new? But anyway, I'll try to explain once more. As you said, "we were looking into alternatives to the Note-X-lettered-note approach". I agree; that's what this discussion is about. You go on to describe my suggestion of with a sarcastic multi-hyphenated phrase. The problem, as I have said to you multiple previous times, is that this page has become a perennial locus of other editors getting pissed off at you, and not all of them are bad editors, and it keeps leading to you being at ANI, with or without a template. That's an ongoing problem, and I think you should be interested in fixing it instead of looking down on the editors who disagree with you. This goes beyond being purely about preference, in that we are really talking about the collective preferences of the Wikipedia editing community, as seen at 99%+ of other pages here. I am interested in getting away from having, not just Note-X-lettered-note, but Note-A-lettered-note, Note-B-lettered-note, Note-C-lettered-note, and on to Note-Z-lettered-note, Note-AA-lettered-note, and so on. We have been discussing, for a long time, whether or not it is possible to get away from such notes while still preserving all of the references and associated information. And here, even in this particularly challenging example, I was able to do it. What I propose is very much like most pages on the English Wikipedia, except for a bit of WP:CITEKILL, and preserves all of the information, even page numbers. I see no reason to put this off any further, unless you would like me to pose this as a Choice A versus Choice B RfC. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:03, 29 September 2014 (UTC) I wasn't being sarcastic. You seem to be operating from the premise that footnotes are to be avoided, though no explanation has ever been given for that idea. Your proposal increases the visual clutter of the article's main text (a bad thing) effectively destroys the reader's ability to verify any particular behavior -- i.e. he'll have to consult, literally, up to two dozen different sources (and in one of them, any of twenty scattered pages) in order to find the relevant one -- (another bad thing); and drops a lettered footnote (matching the behaviors to the sources) in favor of a numbered cite stringing fifteen sources together (a good thing, I suppose, if for some reason you think numbers are prettier than letters) And the WP:INTEGRITY problem is real, which is why that guideline says The point of an inline citation is to allow readers and other editors to check that the material is sourced; that point is lost if the citation is not clearly placed. It also warns that (where large strings of callouts are appended to a single passage) Identifying which inline citation supports which fact may be more difficult unless additional information is added to the inline citations to explicitly identify which portion of the sentence they support, which is what Note X does and your proposed [60] pointedly declines to do‍—‌and which WP:BUNDLING explicitly gives an example of: 5. ^ For the sun's size, see Miller, Edward. The Sun. Academic Press, 2005, p. 1. For the moon's size, see Brown, Rebecca. "Size of the Moon," Scientific American, 51(78):46. For the sun's heat, see Smith, John. The Sun's Heat. Academic Press, 2005, p. 2. As for the apparent idea that a lot of footnotes are a bad thing, it's quite easy to find FAs with extensive notes [28][29][30][31]. I'm sorry, but I really, honestly, don't get what the advantage of the "[60]" approach is, and it has definite problems, which contradict guidelines. EEng (talk) 04:31, 30 September 2014 (UTC) Since Martinevans123 was, as I recall, the first to wonder whether the notes were too much, I'm pinging him for a 3O. Goodness me, I thought I understood footnotes. What was the question, sorry? I got as far as "a shitload of sources" but then I think I lost my way. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:32, 30 September 2014 (UTC) You might start by going back a few posts to the section header What is our goal here? and reading forward from there. The question is whether to stick with -- Yet ANOTHER way old version comparison Current presentation Behaviors ascribed to the post-accident Gage which are either unsupported by, or in contradiction to, the known facts include mistreatment of wife and children (of which Gage had neither); inappropriate sexual behavior, promiscuity, or impaired sexuality; lack of forethought, concern for the future, or embarassment; parading his self-misery, and vainglory in showing his wounds; inability or refusal to hold a job; irresponsibility and untrustworthiness; vagrancy and begging; aggressiveness and violence; plus drifting, drinking, bragging, lying, brawling, bullying, psychopathy, inability to make ethical decisions, loss of all respect for social conventions, and acting "like an idiot". Notes X. Sources attributing behaviors to Gage, or discussing or falsifying these attributions: wife and children sexuality; lack of forethought/​​concern/​​embarassment, parading self-misery, vainglory; employment inability; employment refusal irresponsibility, untrustworthiness; vagrancy, begging; aggressiveness, violence; drifting; drinking; bragging; lying; brawling; bullying; psychopathy; ethical decisions, social conventions, "idiot". -- (where etc. are in the sources list as usual -- see the article [32]) should be changed to Alternative presentation (Note X is dropped; of the cite callouts it made, about half go back into the main article at the end of the paragraph, and the other half go into a new "cite [60]", a kind of "supercite") Behaviors ascribed to the post-accident Gage which are either unsupported by, or in contradiction to, the known facts include mistreatment of wife and children (of which Gage had neither); inappropriate sexual behavior, promiscuity, or impaired sexuality; lack of forethought, concern for the future, or embarassment; parading his self-misery, and vainglory in showing his wounds; inability or refusal to hold a job; irresponsibility and untrustworthiness; vagrancy and begging; aggressiveness and violence; plus drifting, drinking, bragging, lying, brawling, bullying, psychopathy, inability to make ethical decisions, loss of all respect for social conventions, and acting "like an idiot". Sources 60. Moffat, Gregory K. (2012). Angela Browne-Miller (ed.). Fundamentals of Aggression. ABC-CLIO. p. 44. ISBN 978-0-313-38276-5. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help) Myers, David G. (1995). Psychology. Worth Publishers. ISBN 978-0-87901-644-9. Crider, A. B.; Goethals, G. R.; Kavanagh, R. D.; Solomon, P. R. (1983). Psychology. Scott, Foresman. Graham Beaumont; Pamela Kenealy; Marcus Rogers (1991). The Blackwell Dictionary of Neuropsychology. Wiley. Groves, Philip M.; Schlesinger, K. (1982). Introduction to Biological Psychology (2nd ed.). Dubuque, Iowa: Brown. Kalat, James W. (1981). Biological Psychology. Belmont, California: Wadsworth. Smith, A. (1985). The Body. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin. Lahey, B. B. (1992). Psychology: An Introduction (4th ed.). Dubuque, Iowa: Brown. p. 63. Abnormal Behavior. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. 1980. Morris, C. G. (1996). Psychology: An Introduction (9th ed.). Prentice-Hall. Dimond, Stuart J. (1980). Neuropsychology: A Textbook of Systems and Psychological Functions of the Human Brain. London: Butterworths. Tow, Peter Macdonald (1955). Personality changes following frontal leucotomy: a clinical and experimental study of the functions of the frontal lobes in man. With a foreword by Sir Russell Brain. London, New York: Oxford University Press. Restak, Richard M. (1984). The brain. Bantam Books. Hart, Leslie A. (1975). How the Brain Works: A New Understanding of Human Learning, Emotion, and Thinking. Basic Books. Brown, H. (1976). Brain and Behavior: A Textbook of Physiological Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. Smith, A. (1984). The Mind. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Wilson, Andrew (January 1879). The old phrenology and the new. Vol. CCXLIV. pp. 68 85. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help) Hughes, C. D. "Neurological progress in America". Journal of the American Medical Association. 29 (7): 315–23. Sdorow, Lester (1990). Psychology. Dubuque, Iowa: Brown. Changeux, Jean-Pierre (1985). Neuronal Man: The Biology of the Mind. Tr. by Laurence Garey (1st American ed. ed.). Pantheon Books. pp. 158–9. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help) Tfish, do you think that's a fair summary? Somehow [64] became [60] -- whatever. Your proposal had said that [60] would " link back to citation number one, but give the page numbers in the inline citation" but I don't know what you mean by that -- the only interpretation I can give to it isn't technically possible, because of limits on cites citing other cites. But fix the above to put it at best advantage, if you wish (or install it live in the article so we can really see what it looks like in context -- except, sorry, since the above was only a mockup, some of the sources and stuff might be mixed up -- I wasn't as careful as I usually would be). EEng (talk) 15:08, 30 September 2014 (UTC) Yes, I might. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:47, 30 September 2014 (UTC) Do I think that's a fair summary? No, I don't. And I don't mean that in a snippy way, but just that you have made a lot of errors, and they are significant. I was not recommending what you show, with . It can be made easily into a single inline cite, and all you have to do is look at some of the FAs you cited, Frank Pick, Pedro Álvares Cabral, or Peasants' Revolt, to see how it can be done. The way you displayed it makes it look worse than it needs to be. I haven't gone back and checked your #60 source list, but I AGF that it's correct. But, on the page, it won't be in the larger font that the main text is in, so what you display here looks bigger and messier than it actually will be. One way of doing it is at the Cabral page, another is what I already pointed you to, at Animal rights#Notes, number 89 for example. Now let's look at those four FAs that you selected as examples. Not one of them really looks like this page! Frank Pick: 21 notes, almost all of them with only one or two inline cites Pedro Álvares Cabral: 8 notes, considerably simpler than the ones here Demosthenes: the most similar to this page, but with only 14 notes Peasants' Revolt: 15 notes, with no more than a single source for each But the page here has 29 notes, and they are far more complex than the notes at the four pages above. You've really provided evidence in favor of the changes that I and other editors have been recommending! You ask what our goal is here. My goals: To save readers the extra steps of being directed to a note, from which they are then directed to a source. That makes the experience of reading the page more complicated than it needs to be. To make this page more like, well, the four FAs you just pointed to, as well as more like most of Wikipedia. To achieve this without depriving the reader of useful information. You think that it's very important that readers be able to check references for one behavior versus another. If this were a book published by a university press, you would be right. But it isn't. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:07, 30 September 2014 (UTC) I just remembered that I have another goal, and it's a significant one. I want to decrease the "dramah" over this page. And the way to accomplish that is not to denigrate the editors who disagree with you as being drive-by editors. (Say what you will about me, I'm not just driving by!) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:22, 30 September 2014 (UTC) I never thought of you as, or called you, or implied that you were, anything like a drive-by editor. In general you've been here through thick and thin. EEng (talk) 23:18, 30 September 2014 (UTC) Yes, of course. What I meant was that you have said it about other editors, but they, like me, have good-faith concerns. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:23, 30 September 2014 (UTC) Um, I'll check back in a few days. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:13, 30 September 2014 (UTC) I don't blame you, not one bit. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:18, 30 September 2014 (UTC) "What is our goal here?" Martinevans123 (talk) 22:22, 30 September 2014 (UTC) At least that was a soccer ball and not an iron rod! Hilarious video, by the way! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:29, 30 September 2014 (UTC) My new goal is to keep making these small-font comments so that EEng keeps getting edit conflicts and can never reply. De facto topic ban! I win! Evil laughter! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:32, 30 September 2014 (UTC) You gonna hafta do betta den dat. EEng (talk) 23:18, 30 September 2014 (UTC) Curses! Foiled again! --Tryptofish (talk) 23:24, 30 September 2014 (UTC) As said before, I wasn't super-careful in putting together the "[60]" sources, since it was just a mockup. But there's the right number of them, I think. If you look at the markup, you'll see I meant them to be in small, but through a subtlety of the parsing that only functioned for the first bullet entry. Now fixed. Also as said before, I didn't understand, and still don't understand, what you want to do with the stuff. Can you adjust the mockup to show what you mean it to look like? It's your proposal, so can you make it look the way you want? After that we can talk about pros and cons to both approaches, not to mention goals. EEng (talk) 23:18, 30 September 2014 (UTC) The way I suggest dealing with the page numbers for reference 1 would be like: Macmillan, 2000, pp. 39,99,107,116,118,119,316,319,321,323,327–8,331. That's not formatted, but it shows what the inline citation would consist of. (It would look like [60] or a similar number at the end of the sentence in the main text, and the listing in the references list, corresponding to that number, would be like the line above.) There are various ways to do it, but perhaps Template:Sfn, which is used at some of those FAs, would be a good way to do it. I can do a full mockup of it, but not until tomorrow or so. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:43, 30 September 2014 (UTC) Comparison of proposals Here are the two versions that we are considering. I've reproduced both of them, in order to be able to fully display the references. As a result, the reference numbering is altered from what it is on the page, but I think that does not make it difficult to compare and contrast the two options. (I was actually able to condense the inline citations in my suggested change more than I had previously said in talk, once I got into the weeds of doing it. Unless I made a mistake, I have preserved all sources and page numbers.) As the page is now: Cited earlier on the page: Behaviors ascribed to the post-accident Gage which are either unsupported by, or in contradiction to, the known facts include mistreatment of wife and children (of which Gage had neither); inappropriate sexual behavior, promiscuity, or impaired sexuality; lack of forethought, concern for the future, or capacity for embarassment; parading his self-misery, and vainglory in showing his wounds; inability or refusal to hold a job; irresponsibility and untrustworthiness; aggressiveness and violence; vagrancy and begging; plus drifting, drinking, bragging, lying, brawling, bullying, psychopathy, inability to make ethical decisions, loss of all respect for social conventions, and acting "like an idiot".T Notes T. Sources attributing behaviors to Gage, or discussing or falsifying these attributions: wife and children sexuality; lack of forethought/​concern/​embarassment, parading self-misery, vainglory; employment inability; employment refusal irresponsibility, untrustworthiness; aggressiveness, violence vagrancy, begging; drifting; drinking; bragging; lying; brawling; bullying; psychopathy; ethical decisions, social conventions, "idiot". Sources and further reading Proposed change, V1 Proposed change: Cited earlier on the page: Behaviors ascribed to the post-accident Gage which are either unsupported by, or in contradiction to, the known facts include mistreatment of wife and children (of which Gage had neither); inappropriate sexual behavior, promiscuity, or impaired sexuality; lack of forethought, concern for the future, or capacity for embarassment; parading his self-misery, and vainglory in showing his wounds; inability or refusal to hold a job; irresponsibility and untrustworthiness; aggressiveness and violence; vagrancy and begging; plus drifting, drinking, bragging, lying, brawling, bullying, psychopathy, inability to make ethical decisions, loss of all respect for social conventions, and acting "like an idiot". Sources and further reading In my opinion, the major advantage of the status quo is that the reader can locate sources according to the specific behavior. And the major advantages of my suggested change are that it saves the reader the extra step of looking first at a very hard-to-read note that repeats the main text, before getting to the sources, and also makes this page more like the FAs that were cited in the talk section directly above. In addition, I believe that it may be possible simply to delete some of the sources, per WP:CITEKILL. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:01, 2 October 2014 (UTC) An afterthought: If we feel that it is important to differentiate the sources by the associated behaviors, it would be possible to annotate the citations numbered 5–9 in my proposal, by naming the behavior(s) at the end of each one. For example: Abnormal Behavior. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. 1980 (employment refusal), etc. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:39, 2 October 2014 (UTC) Thanks for taking all that trouble. Problems: In Proposed Change, will we be breaking out the page numbers for each of sources 5-8 by behavior, as you mentioned doing for 9? A couple of the sources in giant Source 9 go with multiple behaviors. How will that be indicated? Let's say a prurient reader wants to verify promiscuity. Is he supposed to click, in turn, on , then scan each of those for the word promiscuity? And if he's looking for forethought as in (lack of forethought, concern for the future, or capacity for embarassment), will we labeling each of the several sources related to that, with the words lack of forethought, concern for the future, or capacity for embarassment? And even assuming we do all this, how does the reader even understand how it works? How does he know he's supposed to scan all these sources for these words? CG (cheered on by you) spent a lot of time pressuring me into removing all the Harvard cites and changing them to -type callouts (because, it was said, the many appearances of the name Macmillan was "promotional"). Now you seem to want them back. How is clicking on , by which one is taken to Damasio 1994, pp. 9,11,51., on which one must then click to get to Damasio, H.; Grabowski, T.; Frank, R.; Galaburda, A. M.; Damasio, A. R. (1994). "The return of Phineas Gage: Clues about the brain from the skull of a famous patient". Science. 264 (5162): 1102–1105. doi:10.1126/science.8178168. PMID 8178168. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help) -- any less an example of the two-clicks-required-to-get-to-the-source that you so dislike? The sources list is the article's bibliography, and shouldn't be mixed up with page citations pointing to other members of the same group. Worse (and as a consequence of that) the backlinks "lie" by being incomplete e.g. 3. ^ Damasio, H.; Grabowski, T.; Frank, R.; ... has the cute ^ implying to the reader there's only one cite to this source, when in fact there's actually another i.e. "Source" 7 (which isn't a source, but a link to source 3). BTW, there's a bug in all this apparatus such that clicking e.g. Source 7 in "Proposed" actually takes you to Source 3 in As the page is now. (Remember when CG used to rail about the extra backlinks that didn't point anywhere, calling them the "49 false sources which do not exist?" I wonder what he'd accuse you of -- "Surreptitiously hiding multiple references to one source by knowingly obscuring required backlinks!"?) As I mentioned a few posts back, CG removed the alphabetization of the sources, and only now will I have time to put that back, though using a much better method (discussed at the other side of the link I posted a whiles back). I'd like to do that, and then we can pick this up again. I won't be able to do that for maybe 10 days (takes sustained concentration to avoid introducing errors) however. Can you wait that long? Heave-ho and all that. EEng (talk) 04:10, 2 October 2014 (UTC) Yes, it was a lot of trouble, particularly just figuring out where all the citations were on the page, which is very confusing to try and edit. As I said above, I think the principal issue here is how to weigh, on the one hand, providing readers with sources that are labeled or organized according to the specific behavior, and on the other hand, arranging the page like a good encyclopedia page, such as the FAs cited above, instead of like a complicated scholarly reference. I have pretty much come to the conclusion that we just do not need to identify the sources by behavior, such as your "promiscuity" example. It's not worth it, and readers will not care about it. If you continue to feel that it is so important that we need to do it, then I think we should have a community RfC about it, and I'd be happy to do that. But I really want to ask you to set aside your personal feelings, the beast/breast stuff, and particularly your resentments about that other editor. It's time to move past that. This isn't about bad things that might have happened in the past. It's about what makes for a good page, going forward. OK? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:12, 2 October 2014 (UTC) Nothing to do with the other editor, just trying to explain why there's been a year's delay in installing the improved Sources list. I don't know how much that will affect what we're talking about now, but it might, and so it's prudent to defer this thread for a bit. As I think about this (between heaves) I vaguely envision it might make much of our difference on this become moot. So can we hold off just for now? We can proceed as best we can on further Notes integration in the meantime, as time permits, OK? EEng (talk) 19:29, 2 October 2014 (UTC) On the one hand, I'm a big believer in WP:There is no deadline, so I'm happy to say that there's no pressure to do anything rapidly. On the other hand, I've come to have the feeling that you sometimes ask to put things off when you feel that the discussion isn't going "your" way. I want you to know that I care about reducing the number and complexity of notes on this page, and about simplifying it generally. I'd be fine with having a specifically-worded RfC about this anytime. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:45, 2 October 2014 (UTC) Tfish, that's beneath you. I said way long ago, as soon as the discussion got into the visual details of this question #having said that that it might be mooted by other changes, so to avoid wasted effort it would make sense to suspend this question: getting this deep into the details of citations and such brings us into intersection with an old outstanding to-do, which was to restore the rationalization of the presentation of the sources ... I think it's best to suspend this until that's done, so we can continue in that context. You wanted to press on, and now again it strikes me that some of what you're proposing has overtones like something already in the pipeline, so why not do that first and maybe it will clear up this issue to some extent, or moot it? And really, cut out the attribution of dark motives. That's bullshit. EEng (talk) 21:10, 2 October 2014 (UTC) I've struck the part you objected to. At least you are angry at me instead of at the other editor now. I think it's important to move away from over-reliance on notes. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:23, 2 October 2014 (UTC) I'm not angry at you in the slightest. I knew you'd snap out of it. EEng (talk) 21:50, 2 October 2014 (UTC) I see. OK then, I want you to know that I care about reducing the number and complexity of notes on this page, and about simplifying it generally. I'd be fine with having a specifically-worded RfC about this anytime. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:31, 2 October 2014 (UTC) You just said that. For the love of Pete, will you let me heave in peace for 10 days? I have some minor cleanup, wording/citation fixes, page #s to fill in, etc. that have stacked up recently, so during that time I'd like to spend on those what little brainpower I'll have available here. It's likely that along the way inspiration will come to me re integrating further note material into the main text, so you may find yourself pleasantly surprised along those lines as well. OK? EEng (talk) 23:33, 2 October 2014 (UTC) Having also said that there is no deadline, I wish you an enjoyable heave, and hope that you'll return refreshed, happy, and snapped out of it. I've got plenty of other things to do in the mean time, and of course all editors are free to discuss this here and edit the page in the mean time. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:42, 2 October 2014 (UTC) So far the week's been pretty heave-y, hasn't it? Stay tuned. EEng (talk) 03:38, 10 October 2014 (UTC) Yes indeed, to say the least. I'm happy to see you back! There's no hurry here, so take your time. And I really meant something I said at your user talk, which is that we need you to stick around here, and that it would be awful if Wikipedia were to give you the heave. May your editing here be peaceful! --Tryptofish (talk) 14:15, 10 October 2014 (UTC) Alternative, with behaviors Proposed change, V2 Proposed change, version 2: Cited earlier on the page: Behaviors ascribed to the post-accident Gage which are either unsupported by, or in contradiction to, the known facts include mistreatment of wife and children (of which Gage had neither); inappropriate sexual behavior, promiscuity, or impaired sexuality; lack of forethought, concern for the future, or capacity for embarassment; parading his self-misery, and vainglory in showing his wounds; inability or refusal to hold a job; irresponsibility and untrustworthiness; aggressiveness and violence; vagrancy and begging; plus drifting, drinking, bragging, lying, brawling, bullying, psychopathy, inability to make ethical decisions, loss of all respect for social conventions, and acting "like an idiot". Sources and further reading EEng, I've tried as best I could, and I think I succeeded, at pairing every behavior with every corresponding source and page. It's only cites 5–9 at the end of the main text, with no intervening note, and all information verifiable in the references. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:42, 6 November 2014 (UTC) The problem, Tfish, is that for each behavior there are two sources: one that asserts the behavior, and one that discusses that assertion in the context of the available evidence. Someone wanting to read more about a particular behavior needs both, but this approach loses the "discussion" sources. You've really put a lot of effort into these mockups, but they just don't give the necessary information for WP:V, IMO. Mirokado, maybe you can see something I'm blind to in what Tfish is trying to do? EEng (talk) 04:21, 6 November 2014 (UTC) I have a work panic this week, but I will have a look at this over the weekend. --Mirokado (talk) 18:43, 6 November 2014 (UTC) EEng, first of all, you said here what your concerns were (then), and this wasn't one of them. Furthermore, the page as it is now does not make that distinction, so if that were really make-or-break, you would similarly object to your own version. Those two things together make me very concerned that you are just going to object to anything that isn't your own idea, and that the only way for me to get a consensus one way or the other is to hold an RfC. But, all that said, there is a way to address your new concern in this format, and I'm willing to do it. All that has to happen is to indicate, in the wording for each behavior, whether it is an "attribution" or a "falsification". (If you prefer other words instead of those, that will probably be fine with me.) For example, we could have, for each of Wilson, Hughes, and Smith 1984: "(drinking, attribution)" – and for Macmillan 2000, pages 118, 316, 321: "(drinking, falsification)". That would have no effect at all upon the main text, and would provide the reader with considerably more specific information than the page does now. (Since the page does not currently provide that information, you would either have to tell me, or I'll just have to assume that Macmillan is always the falsification and everyone else is the assertions, and ask you to subsequently correct any mistakes I will have made.) --Tryptofish (talk) 21:23, 6 November 2014 (UTC) Really, Tfish, you gotta stop it with these AGF lapses. I said that "Someone wanting to read more about a particular behavior needs [both the source that asserts the behavior, and one that discusses that assertion], but [your] approach loses the 'discussion'". I didn't say anything about the two types of sources needing to be identified or distinguished from each other, and as you point out my own presentation in the article [33] makes no such distinction -- so instead of jumping to the conclusion that I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth, it might have been better had you gone back and carefully reconsidered your interpretation of what I've written. Therefore, your Version 3 tries to meet a concern I never expressed -- sorry. (There's nothing wrong with distinguishing the "assertion" sources from the "discussion/falsification" sources, but it adds wordiness for little or no benefit.) But whether it's Version 2 or Version 3 (and I really am trying to accommodate your preferences and concerns here) I kind of see what you're trying to do, but I'm still puzzled by some things. First of all, why are [5][6][7][8] and [9] five separate segments? They're all called out just once, from that one point in the article, so why not merge them? Now, I won't have time for this tonight, but as I write I think (I hope, I pray) I see a way forward working from your V2/V3, so unless you're really, really fired up, don't do a V4 until you see what I have in mind. EEng (talk) 04:40, 7 November 2014 (UTC) And remember, cut it out with the AGF lapses! I'm going to AGF that you started to compose that comment before you had an opportunity to see my two subsequent drafts below. As for your telling me to "cut it out", please feel free to take it up at ANI. I'm just taking what you say, as it is written here. At this point, I do not know what you really want. You seem to me to be saying that "Someone wanting to read more about a particular behavior needs both, but this approach loses the "discussion" sources." Are you saying that this approach leaves out some of the sources, as in failing to cite some of them? I'm pretty sure that's not the case. Or are you saying that some kind of "discussion" of the sources is missing? If so, what is missing? Is there a problem with the grouping in citation number 9, as in mixing in some sources that were not, in fact, attributing behaviors? (If that's the case, there's no way any reader would have known that.) I just don't know! You ask me now about why 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 are separate sources. I'm receptive to combining them further, if you want. As you know, I began combining sources so as not to have a huge sequence of superscript numbers at the end of the sentence, something I think we both want to avoid. I left out 5, 6, 7, and 8, from the grouping in 9, simply because 5–8 are also cited elsewhere on the page. But it doesn't have to be that way. We could combine all of them into a single cite. Or we could recombine them into two cites, one for "discussion" sources and the other for "assertion" sources. Let me know what you prefer. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:52, 7 November 2014 (UTC) Correction: I just made a trial run at combining the sources more, and it looked to me like sources cited with the "sfn" template do not display within the "ref" tags. Maybe there's another way, or maybe having 5–9 is just fine. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:11, 7 November 2014 (UTC) Two apologies: (a) When I first said (above) you left out the "discussion" sources, I guess I was still looking at "proposed change" (which did leave out the "discussion" sources -- or at least, didn't tell you which part of them related to which behavior) not "version 2"; (b) Yes, I didn't realize you'd created a V4 when I posted the above. EEng (talk) 22:38, 7 November 2014 (UTC) That's perfectly OK! Thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:40, 7 November 2014 (UTC) Good. Now take a break and let me think about something I had in mind last night.. EEng (talk) 22:50, 7 November 2014 (UTC) Now, while you're away for a while, I'm going to blank the page. Evil laughter. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:55, 7 November 2014 (UTC) Or, a slight variation on that. (Will follow in my next edit, this edit is a placeholder.) --Tryptofish (talk) 21:25, 6 November 2014 (UTC) Proposed change, version 3: Cited earlier on the page: Behaviors ascribed to the post-accident Gage which are either unsupported by, or in contradiction to, the known facts include mistreatment of wife and children (of which Gage had neither); inappropriate sexual behavior, promiscuity, or impaired sexuality; lack of forethought, concern for the future, or capacity for embarassment; parading his self-misery, and vainglory in showing his wounds; inability or refusal to hold a job; irresponsibility and untrustworthiness; aggressiveness and violence; vagrancy and begging; plus drifting, drinking, bragging, lying, brawling, bullying, psychopathy, inability to make ethical decisions, loss of all respect for social conventions, and acting "like an idiot". Sources and further reading Now, there is clear attribution of when behaviors are attributed, or disputed. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:41, 6 November 2014 (UTC) Rewritten with a different emphasis As my attention has been drawn to the assert-refute nature of the source material, I find myself thinking that a different approach to the main text may be needed: V4 Proposed change, version 4: Cited earlier on the page: Numerous other behaviors have been widely ascribed to the post-accident Gage, based on very little evidence, including: mistreatment of wife and children (of which Gage had neither); inappropriate sexual behavior, promiscuity, or impaired sexuality; lack of forethought, concern for the future, or capacity for embarassment; parading his self-misery, and vainglory in showing his wounds; inability or refusal to hold a job; irresponsibility and untrustworthiness; aggressiveness and violence; vagrancy and begging; plus drifting, drinking, bragging, lying, brawling, bullying, psychopathy, inability to make ethical decisions, loss of all respect for social conventions, and acting "like an idiot". However, every one of these attributed behaviors is either unsupported by, or in contradiction to, the known facts. Sources and further reading This doesn't really change the content of the main text, but it provides a better allocation of weight between Macmillan and all the other sources. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:00, 7 November 2014 (UTC) Arbor-treeish break Re V4: It's inappropriate to "allocate weight between Macmillan and all the other sources" because the other sources aren't sources for facts about on Gage -- they're just sources for their own statements about Gage. And the "based on very little evidence" isn't supported by [5][6][7] -- none of those sources say, "I'm going to say Gage was a drunkard, although I'm saying that with very little evidence" -- so there's a WP:V problem with the way you're trying to split "attribution" and falsification. (And, BTW, there's not "very little evidence" for these statements -- there's no evidence whatsoever.) So I'd like to go back to your V3 and work from there. [Hours later] Abort! Tfish, I've really tried to find a way to fix the technical problems with your V3, but I just can't do it. I see this way and that way to modify it to fit it into the article somehow, but I can't tell what you would want, because rereading this whole thread, I honestly don't see what the motivation for the "Proposed change" version in the first place -- it's just another way of presenting the sources for this one very source-dense passage. Mirokado, thanks for "volunteering", and I (we, I'm sure) look forward to your bringing some fresh perspective to this. You might start at #Comparison of proposals (comparing "As the page is now" to Version 3 further down). EEng (talk) 05:52, 8 November 2014 (UTC) OK, let me start with some pleasant things. I've looked at the edits to the page that you've made in the past 24 hours or so, I like the edits, the way you simplified some things by removing some quotes, very much. Thanks! And I am perfectly content with the way that you collapsed some earlier discussions on this talk. And – I'm equally happy to work with you on V3 relative to V4 or any other V-number. Now, to answer the questions you have posed to me. I'll retract my choice of words with respect to allocation of weight. My point was that we, as editors approaching the source material neutrally, have to evaluate the extent to which we have different sources with different points of view but roughly equal validity as reliable sources, versus the extent to which we have old sources that have been refuted by newer sources. Now, the Amazing Tryptofish will put my fin to my head and divine EEng's thoughts, which are that Macmillan et al. really did correct errors in earlier source material. Continuing my clairvoyance, I divine that other editors who may at some time return to this page will think that evil EEng is showing his COI. So I was floating the idea of moving the Macmillan material from the beginning to the end of the paragraph, and seeing what reaction I would get from you. That said, the Amazing Tryptofish also believes, in this instance, that it's pretty obvious that Macmillan et al. really did correct errors in the earlier literature, so I'm OK with going back to V3 from V4, if Mirokado (and anyone else who might comment) agrees with you about this point. Now as to your abortion (wait a minute, not what I meant), I'll start with the technical issues that you might have run into, although it would help if you could spell out what they were. It probably wasn't about my parenthetical additions of the behaviors, but I don't care much about those, having only put them in because, apparently, I had misunderstood something you said earlier. (V1 shows what that looks like without any of the behaviors, and V2 with behaviors but without indicating "attribution" versus "falsification".) Did it have something to do with my use of "ref" tags? I do know from looking at the discussions you had with Mirokado that you asked me to look at, that the two of you have been considering what might happen when other editors try to add sources using "ref" tags. I think that I only used "ref" for citation [9]. Depending on what we decide, we may decide to go various ways with the source formatting, so that brings me to the "why" of my proposals. As I said when I first presented the #Comparison of proposals, the difference relative to the way the page is now lies in the elimination of the Note. I see that, as I have been writing these comments in talk, you have been simplifying some of the notes, much as I suggested below in #Notes. Good for you! Thanks!! We first got into discussing this note as a result of other editors getting angry at you over it, and you and I getting into a discussion growing out of that earlier discussion, in which I argued that even though FAs and such do use notes, the notes tend not to be as lengthy and, well, fussy, as this one. And I've demonstrated that it is possible to eliminate the note entirely, with just a short string of superscript numbers for citations at the end of the paragraph, with absolutely zero loss (correct me if I'm missing something) of information. Simpler, less eccentric relative to other Wikipedia pages, and just as useful to readers. So, I think we come to a question about whether, per the technical issues, it's worth the effort to change some things about the way the page is formatted, in order to make this improvement in citation possible (as in making it possible to use "ref" tags, and thus being able to get rid of an unhelpful note). If that is something you can work with, great. If not, I'm going to start an RfC and determine whether other editors agree with me that getting rid of that note will be a good thing. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:41, 8 November 2014 (UTC) I've now read through the above contributions and had a look at the current article, but it is a bit late tonight (Europe) to formulate a careful response, so I will post again on Sunday. --Mirokado (talk) 02:03, 9 November 2014 (UTC) Psychotic break Thanks, Mirokado, you have amazing fortitude. I know we both look forward to your shining some light on this. In the meantime, in response to Tfish's concerns about the cite syntax and so on: The article uses {{r|smith87}} instead of <ref name=smith87/> and uses {{efn | NOTE TEXT}} (efn apparently stands for "explanatory foot note") instead of <ref group=lower-alpha> NOTE TEXT </ref> because they're cleaner and more compact. These are merely alternative syntaxes, and anything you can do with the usual <ref>...</ref> syntax you can do with r/efn too, and do it the same way. (And if an editor does add something using the usual <ref>...</ref> syntax, that would work fine too, just like normal -- you can mix the syntaxes no problem.) Whatever problems you're having are nothing to do with the r/efn syntax. The problem seems to be that what you're trying to do violates the hierarchy ARTICLE TEXT - NOTES - SOURCES. In general article text can invoke {{efn}} and {{r}} freely; but in a note (i.e. within {{efn}}) you can use {{r}} but not another {{efn}}; and in a source you can't use either {{efn}} nor {{r}}. You're also trying to use {{sfn}} in ways it's not designed for -- it's meant for use in article text, or notes, but you can't use it within a source to refer to another source to create a Harvard "short footnote" (e.g. Macmillan (2000) p. 123) which links to a full cite in a bibliography section -- not to link to another "source" entry. The actual technical limitations are slightly less rigid than just stated, but the exceptions are baroquely technical (e.g. some things are possible if you do things in exactly one particular order). And, again, I've expressed the above in terms of the r/efn syntax, but <ref>...</ref> has the same limitations (actually somewhat more limitations, if you really want to know). Mirokado, can you confirm the above, please? Yes that is a fair general summary. --Mirokado (talk) 10:17, 9 November 2014 (UTC) Because of these limitations your mockups can't actually be realized in the article, or in any article, and no RfC is going to change that. I've been discussing them here in the hopes that, once I understand what it is you're after, I could install something like it in the article for you. Really, I've really been wanting to do that so we could bring this accursed thread to an end! But after all this conversation, I still can't understand what it is you're after, because the only goal I can see stated in your last post is, "I've demonstrated that it is possible to eliminate the note entirely". Ironically, because of the hierarchy limitations just explained, the only way to use sfn the way you want would be to somehow move the Macmillan (2000) p. 123 strings to notes, which would increase the number of notes! And even ignoring that, your approach removes a systematic enumeration of which sources assert/discuss which behaviors and, in its place, substitutes a confusing presentation broken into 5 pieces and full of parentheticals, so that the reader has to look all over (probably must use text search of the page) in order to find the sources related to e.g. employment inability. (Try searching employment inability on this Talk page to get the picture.) This is entirely against the whole purpose of citation, which is to show the reader the specific sources that support a given point. All this to reduce the note count by one? I just don't get it. Mirokado, save us! EEng (talk) 06:20, 9 November 2014 (UTC) Well, let us see what I can suggest... First, though, a late breakfast calls. --Mirokado (talk) 10:17, 9 November 2014 (UTC) Technical break(-through) It is possible to integrate Tryptofish's version 3 into the article: install User:Ucucha/HarvErrors.js if you have not already done so substitute the new "Behaviors ascribed ... like an idiot" content and preview correct the "Cite error: A list-defined reference named "wilson" is not used in the content" errors by removing the mentioned citations. This is made easy by EEng's disciplined use of list-defined references. correct the "Harv error: link from #CITEREFMacmillan2000 doesn't point to any citation" errors (these are what you need HarvErrors for) by adding |ref=harv to the corresponding citations. place the behaviours ref in the list-defined references consistently with all the others but the very long behaviours reference list causes problems with column breaks: although the start of this list happens to be just after a column start with two or three columns, we get a nearly empty third column with five columns. Clearly a variation of number or order of references could cause this problem to arise unexpectedly during normal editing (and we see it in the uneven column lengths in the example above) so I don't think this is practicable. We would need to think of ways of splitting that very long reference or reducing its length. For example: three of the citations are only present to support an unsubstantiated claim of "drifting", three more only for "employment inability" and so on. Are all these duplicates really necessary? See below. EEng (talk) assuming that 5 concatenated callouts are about as many as we would want, we could consolidate the embedded citations differently so there are several blocks of shorter citations (numbers as in ex 3): 5 + 6: Discussion and presentation of evidence falsifying the claims 7 + 8 plus citations from 9 like aggressiveness, violence, bulling: Attribution of antisocial attitudes and behavior citations relating to employment, drifting, begging citations relating to interpersonal issues (wife, children, sexuality, ...) anything which would not fit in one of the above? if a review article already lists these unsubstantiated claims in detail along with the supporting citations, it would be ok I think to use that reference to support the list in the article content, which means we could get rid of all this complexity. Originally there was just a footnote mentioning Macmillan's comprehensive reviews on mis-ascribed behaviors [34], but another editor objected [35], so at tremendous labor I added cites for each behavior [36], after which that same editor complained [37] I was "ref bombing the text into an unreadable state". So after researching guidelines like WP:CITEBUNDLE I addressed that using the setup seen in the article now [38], and after just two brisk months and 250k of discussion here we are! The reason there are 2-3 cites for each behavior is that these are the behaviors frequently ascribed to Gage. If I we set the bar any lower we'll need a separate article, List of behaviors ascribed to Phineas Gage with no evidence at all, and even that might need to be divided into subarticles to avoid crashing the servers when someone accesses it. So yes, we could go back to just citing Macmillan again (and not as a footnote anymore, just as a superscript callout, since the footnote material seen in this post's first diff has been split off already) but sooner or later the legendary other editor will show up and complain about my ongoing plan to give references to Macmillan "undue prominence" in the article by excluding other citations. Then we can start the whole process over again! EEng (talk) Does this help? I'm reminded of the old adage: "Be careful what you ask for, you may get it!". --Mirokado (talk) 17:37, 9 November 2014 (UTC) Yes, it really helps. EEng (talk) 20:49, 9 November 2014 (UTC) Tfish, my apologies for not realizing that there's a 37-step iterative procedure which does, indeed, make Version 3 possible... at least... I think... um... not sure I quite follow all the steps described without actually trying it. (And Mirokado, how do you know about all this obscure js and stuff? You are indeed the Citation Whisperer.) [Technical side note to Mirokado: I think my statement re "trying to use {{sfn}} in ways it's not designed" is indeed correct, but I think I see why this setup might function anyway -- the outgoing links from the "short cites" e.g. Macmillan (2000) p. 123 are simply blind references to anchors, no matter where those anchors may be on the page. The machinery that generates the short cites, and the outgoing links underlying them, neither knows nor cares how the targets of those links are generated, nor where on the page they are, and so none of the "hierarchy" limitations mentioned above come into play -- so long as the anchors do get generated somehow.] How do I know things? People mention something and I have a look at it (just as I have now mentioned HarvErrors to you). Also, if I see something in an article, I look to see how it was done. Yes you are correct about harv/sfn following id attributes (anchors). --Mirokado (talk) 00:54, 10 November 2014 (UTC) But, Mirokado, I have a question: Putting aside your role as the Superhero Citation Whisperer, and just in your everyday role as a mortal editor like the rest of us, do you have an opinion on whether what we get under Version 3 is, or is not, an improvement relative to the way the article presents the material now? I'm thinking in particular of my concerns above, in the paragraph just before the #Technical break(-through) section heading. EEng (talk) 18:45, 9 November 2014 (UTC) I continue to like the edits to the page that the two of you are making. To some extent, I feel like the best thing I can do now is to get out of the way and let Mirokado have at it. I think one part of what I see in Mirokado's comments above is that we might not need to have so many sources cited at all, and I would be very happy to go along with reducing the number. And EEng, I'm sure that we will find that formatting can be technically possible, although I'm the least knowledgeable of the three editors here as to how to accomplish it. Please don't let concerns about formatting difficulties get in the way of decisions about what is good for the page in terms of what is visible to readers. The fact that formatting methods, that are only visible in the edit window, may have to be changed is not a good reason to reject improvements in the format that is visible to readers of the page. I've looked closely at your point about "sfn" being used for a short references section, followed by a full references section, but not for mixing short and full references within one section, and I went and reread WP:CITE with that in mind. I'm a little out of my editing comfort zone here, and I might be mistaken, but I'm not actually seeing a guideline that short and full references must always be in separate sections. --Tryptofish (talk) 3:38 pm, Today (UTC−5) For reasons that mystify me, EEng's most recent comment generated one of those red notifications to me, even though it looks like it was more a reply to Mirokado, so if there's a question or comment to me that I missed, please set me straight. I saw what EEng said about adding the other cites so that it isn't just citing Macmillan, and I feel your pain. I don't think we should wholesale delete all the "attribution" citations. They are useful and should stay, at least some of them. But we could cut them back to one "attribution" source per behavior, which would shorten the list by about half, and I would like that (it might even make the "sfn" issue moot!). --Tryptofish (talk) 20:58, 9 November 2014 (UTC) No idea why you got pinged, especially since I always refer to you as "Tfish" -- the system's not that clever, is it? If we take out or reduce the "attribution" sources, then you're in charge of dealing with you-know-who if he drops in for another visit. I hope the system isn't smart enough to figure out who "you-know-who" is, so that it pings him now! That you say, "formatting methods, that are only visible in the edit window, may have to be changed" means I failed badly in explaining things earlier -- again, using the r/efn syntax instead of the < ref>...< /ref> syntax does not in any way limit what can be done or change how you go about doing it. To the extent there are concerns with using sfn within the "sources" section, mixing short and full references within one section, etc., those concerns don't stem from anything about guidelines, but rather are entirely technical. Clearly sfn isn't designed to be used that way; and though it turns out (Mirokado suggests, and I think I now agree) that it will work that way, that's only because of an accident of its design. But if it works, and it's indeed an improvement for the reader, I'm willing to take advantage of that accident. I'm going to leave it to Mirokado to break the 1–1 tie over which approach is better for the reader, but (tee-hee) I'm also going to leave it to him to figure out how to implement any change because, after all, he is the Citation Whisperer. Congratulations, Mirokado, you're in charge! EEng (talk) 21:34, 9 November 2014 (UTC) Thanks to you both for the comments. I will make the change Monday evening (Europe), it is a bit late now. I'll go with version 3 above, with the citations redistributed a bit, as I suggested. That removes the current word-callout-salad and should go some way to bring related citations near each other. Editors will of course be welcome to tweak things once the basic framework is in place, in particular to get the one-citation-per-issue balance right. --Mirokado (talk) 00:54, 10 November 2014 (UTC) Everything's so easy when you're around. I know whatever you do will be consistent, attractive, technically sound and so on, so I won't urge those goals on you. But please organize the cites so that those related to Behavior A are grouped together, then those for Behavior B, etc., so that the reader only has to look one place to find out about a given behavior. This is "almost" easy, as follows. In the current version [39], sources [37]-[60] are only used for this behavior stuff, so to a first approximation we can just organize them like this Wife and children: {{cite book|author=Smith|year=1972}} {{cite book|author=Jones|year=1982}} Sexuality: {{cite book|author=Anders|year=1999}} {{cite book|author=Billson|year=1998}} where those items are what used to be in [37]-[60]. The flies-in-the-ointment are that [42], [49] are used in multiple behaviors, and [42], [1], [M], [M1] are used outside the behaviors list as well in it. The trick, as I see it, is how to present those along with the simple, one-time {{cite book}} refs, in as consistent and understandable a way as possible. Good luck EEng (talk) 03:31, 10 November 2014 (UTC) Thank you, Mirokado. (And that's all I'm going to say for now.) --Tryptofish (talk) 21:09, 10 November 2014 (UTC) Discussion relating to these behavior citations in particular now continues in #Disposition of behavior citations. --Mirokado (talk) 19:03, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

A7 Image link issue

+---------------------+ EEng (talk) 05:49, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I'd prefer to leave the picture as it is: the inset acts as a thumbnail for the original drawing, the illegible caption may be an extra temptation to the user to click through, the white border outside the drawing frame is intended to give the impression of a piece of paper laid over one corner of the enlargement. --Mirokado (talk) 14:12, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Very wise as always. EEng (talk) 18:41, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

And so (to be clear) you're OK with the other uses of link=? Frankly, I think it's a very underused technique, allowing both thumbs and full-size imgs to each do their jobs as best possible.

Yes I am happy with the other uses of link=. I would like to go through the file descriptions to clarify the attribution as I did for the phrenology pic, if you don't mind? There is also at least one link to an en: file page which should be changed to the commons file.

The excerpt from the record book at the end of the Exhumation section is not showing a link over the image as I would expect (Firefox 34.0.5, linux) but it is not clear to me why this would be. I will look further. --Mirokado (talk) 14:12, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I was wondering when you would notice that. It's an artifact of the oh-so-clever way I used quote box|align=center to position the caption to the left of the image, instead of below. Read the <! -- hidden comment, and see what happens as you narrow the browser window. For some reason this reduces the clickable area to just the tiniest border around the image. I like caption at left (and the little trick of using nobreak to relocate the caption underneath when the window gets narrow -- an idea that struck me later) but I'm guessing we should probably switch to the standard arrangement before some know-it-all gives us a hard time for it. (I just now added link=, which another editor had removed some time ago and which I overlooked to restore. But this doesn't change anything I've just said.) Your advice, O Wise One? EEng (talk) 18:41, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

By all means make any adjustments you like to file descriptions etc. EEng (talk) 04:22, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I only wish there was a thumb syntax allowing a tuple (Xbegin%, Xend%, Ybegin%, Yend%), which would specify a rectangular crop of the specified File: to be used as the thumb, without having to upload a special cropped version just for use in the thumb. (Does that make sense?)

{{Annotated image}} and {{annotated image 4}} allow us to display a cropped extract from an image, but unfortunately they do not play nicely with thumbnails and the user's default settings. The results particluarly with larger images are miserable, see p-Hydroxynorephedrine as you make the window narrower. --Mirokado (talk) 14:12, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, as with imagemap I was very excited by the possibilities of annotation, then disappointed by the reality. I annotated this [44] but then realized that the annotation only works when you're actually on the description page -- doesn't work when you mouseover the thumb in the article, so really what's the point. On top of that, I vaguely recall, you need to have something enabled in your user prefs, and it only works on the commons description page, not on the WP description page (which, depending on your prefs, is where you land when clicking on the image). All in all another good idea completely screwed up. EEng (talk) 18:41, 28 December 2014 (UTC)</small<

Tfish, now are you on board, or are we still missing your concern? EEng (talk) 23:15, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

<Rubber baby buddy BUMPers> EEng (talk) 08:07, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Monthly bump. EEng (talk) 03:18, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

This exact technique is used on the WP Main Page

As seen here [45] this precise technique is used even on WP's very own Main Page, so it seems what we have here is yet another case of WP:IDONTLIKEIT and/or WP:ONLYTHINGSIKNOWABOUTAREOK. Mirokado, I don't know if you noticed that Tfish has had a personal emergency. I don't want to take advantage of his absence, but I think now this is one subtopic we can close with confidence, and with regard to this one, at least, I'd like to take the opportunity to reduce the mass of stuff I'll need to pester him about when he's back. What do you think? EEng (talk) 18:16, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

• I had not noticed but have now responded, thanks for the info. With 216 page watchers, I think we can assume that this method is now accepted. I'm still waiting for the inset image to be copied to commons so I can finish the tidying up, but we can do that as part of routine editing. So yes, as far as I am concerned, mark this as resolved. --Mirokado (talk) 19:26, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Extended content
I've removed the links that bypass normal image linking procedures. The effect of this link was to link to the image and then upon clicking, link directly to the image and bypass the options to access relevant licensing information. It now works properly. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 15:52, 7 September 2014 (UTC) The way image is presented in the article. Thumbnail presents a cropped "closeup" of part of the image, so that "organs" of Veneration and Benevolence can be made out. Clicking on takes you to the formal description page, while clicking on the image itself takes you to the full, uncropped image. You're mistaken. The required link is still there even when |link= is used -- it's the little double-rectangle thingamajig in the upper-right of the caption area. It happens that in most thumbs, clicking the image itself takes you to the same place that the double-rectangle thingamajig does, but that's not required. In these cases, the reason for using the |link= parameter is so (for example) the thumbnail is a cropped "zoom in" like you see at right, but when you click the image, you get the full, uncropped img. (Try it.) But if the reader wants the image description page for the thumb, he clicks the little overlapping rectangles. What the thumbnail would look like -- illegible -- if we don't use a crop for the thumbnail. If we didn't do that, then what would appear in the article would be the whole, uncropped img squeezed into a thumb, like you see at right, which is illegible. Does this make sense? I've put the links back because, if we're going to discuss this further, it's easier if we can see what we're discussing. EEng (talk) 03:45, 8 September 2014 (UTC) While that is nice and all, the images source and licensing information needs to be accessible. The way in which you have it structured completely conceals it and prevents users from accessing the information. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:43, 8 September 2014 (UTC) Please re-read what I wrote. The icon always takes the reader to the image description page, and that's all that's required. For another example in which clicking on the image takes you somewhere other than the image description page, see WP:Picture_tutorial#Image_maps. Do you see now? EEng (talk) 05:14, 8 September 2014 (UTC) Caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption Clicking on the image should go to the image, not another image. if you want to use the cropped version, then clicking on it should go to the cropped version. Frietjes (talk) 15:08, 8 September 2014 (UTC) (You seem to have added the image seen here at right to illustrate the way you think things should work.) Just to be clear, the word "should" in your comment means that you prefer it that way, not that it's required to be that way. The guidelines (here's another: WP:Picture_tutorial#Links) not only allow it to be otherwise, they give examples of where you'd want it to take advantage of that. Why would we make editors choose between making the thumbnail legible and giving the reader the full image when he clicks? What purpose is served by that? EEng (talk) 03:42, 12 September 2014 (UTC) Anyone have thoughts on this? EEng (talk) 05:26, 19 September 2014 (UTC) I'm trying to think of a way to satisfy everyone's concerns. It seems to me that, from the perspective of what the reader might want to find out, we need to consider two competing considerations. The first is that we absolutely do need to show the cropped image in order to make the relevant brain regions legible. The second is that the un-cropped image is very helpful in locating where those regions are, within the brain as a whole. Perhaps a solution would be to make use of Template:Multiple image, and show both images together. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:45, 19 September 2014 (UTC) Tell me you didn't just make an edit with the edit summary "adjust pus". Yuck!! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:20, 19 September 2014 (UTC) Apparently you missed explain laudable pus [40] and pus backstory [41]. EEng (talk) 01:13, 26 September 2014 (UTC) Are you really building a sub-article on phrenology, here inside the Gage article? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:27, 19 September 2014 (UTC) Tfish, I wonder if you fully understand the "operation" of the image as it currently exists in the article, which is the same as in the first image in this section (the A7 section). The thumb presented is the crop, so he can read it. If he clicks the crop, he is taken to the full image, shown very large. Doesn't that serve both your competing considerations, but resolve the competition? (And if the reader clicks the he gets the description page for the crop, but that's just a formality.) I can't see why we'd present the full and the crop together. The only thing I can think to change might be to add to the caption something like Click to see diagram of full head EEng (talk) 05:26, 26 September 2014 (UTC) Yes, I fully understood that when I made my previous comment, I promise. I agree with Frietjes in that "Clicking on the image should go to the image, not another image." It's not that there is anything magically important about that rule, but it's just the way things are on 99.999% of pages on the English Wikipedia, and I'm trying to drag you, kicking and screaming, into compliance with common practice. I accept that what I'm saying isn't, strictly speaking, a policy or guideline requirement, but I still think that it's a good idea to conform to common practice even if it isn't absolutely required. The reason I suggested a double image is the same reason why you are considering clicking through to the uncropped image: so that readers can see both (one, with the relevant detail more visible, the other, with the position within the entire head accessible). I suppose I could also support a variation on the explicit "click here to see...", if what the reader would click on would be a blue link to the uncropped image, in the image caption. (In other words, click on the cropped image and you get the cropped image file page, but if you click on the link in the caption, you get the uncropped image.) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:29, 26 September 2014 (UTC) Bump When the user clicks he's saying "I want to get a better view". Usually that returns just a blown-up version of exactly what the thumbnail shows, but if the thumb was cropped it's hard to imagine the reader objecting to being shown the uncropped full context. What is the point of making the user click a special link to see the uncropped image when it's natural for him or her to just click the image? Besides, in the grand tradition of commentary on this article, it's been decreed that "We don't do this" [42][43] -- and we certainly can't run against such imperial imperious commands, can "we"? And, as discussed, the formal requirements (licensing etc.) are satisfied by the little icon-thingee in the caption. I'm <bump>ing this thread in the hope we can resolve it expeditiously with Mirokado's help. Mirokado, what do you think of the use of the |link= feature so that clicking a cropped thumb takes you to an uncropped image "behind"? EEng (talk) 05:26, 14 November 2014 (UTC) BUMP! Mirokado, where art thou? EEng (talk) 14:06, 20 November 2014 (UTC) Arrr. I am in fact away for a few days, but I have been thinking a bit about this and will continue to do so over this weekend. --Mirokado (talk) 18:40, 20 November 2014 (UTC) Enjoy! EEng (talk) 19:06, 20 November 2014 (UTC) Thanks, I certainly did! Longest run 3800–2000m took about half an hour, good snow and weather. I'll get back to this over the next day or so. --Mirokado (talk) 11:15, 30 November 2014 (UTC) I've updated the two files on Commons so they each show a thumbnail of the derived or derivative work. That I think clarifies the attribution. --Mirokado (talk) 18:08, 30 November 2014 (UTC) Mirokado, if I were on a sinking ship, and technical knowledge of WP or Commons was my ticket to safety, you would be the one editor I would choose to have with me. Tryptofish, does that resolve your concerns? EEng (talk) 19:54, 30 November 2014 (UTC) It seems to me that what Mirokado did was to resolve your concerns, rather than mine. Mirokado, please see what I said just above the "Bump" header. Again, I'm not saying that any of this is really wrong, just that it's unconventional. In fact, at the same time I'm telling you that, I'm also thinking how much I disapprove of the "Media Viewer" that the nice folks at WMF gave us, so that leaves me with a lot of ambivalence all around. I'm still very much digging my way out of a "heavey" week of my own, and I just haven't had time to give this page the attention that is required if I'm going to really be of help here, but give me several more days, and I will. It is very much my impression that the work both of you have been doing on this page has been very helpful, so my sincere thanks to both of you about that. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:52, 30 November 2014 (UTC) I actually didn't have a concern, but it was nice that Mirokado installed the technically precise template to clarify the relationship between the full and the cropped image, thereby resolving any concern about attribution, which was the "problem" with which you-know-who opened this thread. I hate the image viewer thingee too, though I really don't know what that has to do with anything here. While we await your heavey return, perhaps Mirokado can give his opinion on the general question of the appropriateness of using |link= with a cropped image to take the user to the uncropped image (or, more precisely, to the description page for the uncropped image). EEng (talk) 21:09, 30 November 2014 (UTC) It is clearly allowed to do that (Wikipedia:Picture tutorial which has already been mentioned) and I would not have complained about it here. It is also clearly rare to do it, which makes it reasonable to look for the best way to provide a high quality user experience in this case. I am certainly happy for the article to remain as it is while we continue to discuss alternatives. What we have now was the simplest change I could think of, and in any case improves the description pages. The point about media player is that if that is enabled, you don't get to the description page with one click, so you don't see the other_version images. I have several other ideas, some related to suggestions which have already been made, but no more tonight... --Mirokado (talk) 00:36, 1 December 2014 (UTC) Something crossed my mind, and I just thought I should point it out. Perhaps some editor at Commons will decide to edit the file pages there in such a way as to thwart what we are trying to do here, and that could lead to some cross-project disagreement. That could be an argument against unconventional fixes. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:32, 1 December 2014 (UTC) There's nothing about the way the files are described at Commons that's unusual -- one file is a crop of the other. Mirokado just indicated that in a more elegant way than I had, with all the just-right values in the Source and Author fields and so on. I agree with him that all we need to do here is determine the "best way to provide a high-quality user experience". AFAIK the current setup provides that, but if something better can be suggested then I'd be in favor of switching to that. What I'm not in favor of is reducing the quality of the user's experience on the mere possibility that some editors will be hostile to techniques that are perfectly acceptable -- even preferable -- but with which they aren't familiar. Here's a particularly egregious example of an editor thinking that what he's seen defines what's acceptable, no matter what guidelines say -- note the telltale sudden silence at the end, when that realization finally sinks in. Let's wait to here what MacGyver comes up with. EEng (talk) 22:09, 1 December 2014 (UTC) There are lots of ways we could present these images a bit differently. I will try some out probably over next weekend and post any promising suggestions here. As far as commons-vs.-en is concerned, we can always upload here and add {{Do not move to Commons}} for something like, for example, a derivative work specifically designed for display in a particular way in a particular article, but I will try to avoid that. --Mirokado (talk) 23:33, 2 December 2014 (UTC) OK, Gyro Gearloose, we await your results. But I don't get this concern about Commons -- what's this potential problem everyone's worried about? EEng (talk) 01:42, 3 December 2014 (UTC) It's just that commons is very generic, so we can't really insist on details (particularly any trickery) relied on by one particular article being retained. --Mirokado (talk) 18:56, 7 December 2014 (UTC) I still don't get it. What is the trickery we're using? It's just two images, one of which happens to be the crop of the other. Why would anyone tinker with those "details"? EEng (talk) 21:15, 7 December 2014 (UTC) Not something to worry about, we would just localise the image if it has been designed very specifically for the one article. This is not currently a problem. --Mirokado (talk) 00:10, 8 December 2014 (UTC) Drum roll, please.... Phrenology map with inset, using ImageMap. How about something like this? --Mirokado (talk) 18:56, 7 December 2014 (UTC) It's kind of like a map of Country X with a little inset showing where Country X is relative to other countries in Asia or whatever. At first I was excited because I imagined that if you clicked on the "full image inset" you'd be taken to the full image. But I was wrong, of course (though I think that might be possible with image maps, except they're very broken and have been for years.) Sorry to be dense, but I still don't see what's wrong with the current setup. Why would anyone, on clicking on the crop, object to being taken to the uncropped? "Damn those Wikipedia editors! I did not want to see the other parts of this diagram of a head! EEng (talk) 21:15, 7 December 2014 (UTC) Well its just that the result is a surprise, even if a nice one once you think about it. I've now had a look at ImageMap, which seems to work fine in this simple case, even playing nicely with image parameters, and added some imagemap definitions for the image with inset. --Mirokado (talk) 00:10, 8 December 2014 (UTC) Well, I don't see anything wrong with a surprise if it's a nice surprise. I welcome you're to have a go with imagemap, but... I fear you're in for frustration: I put substantial effort into a use of imagemap once, only to realize later it goes utterly haywire as zooms change (or something -- I forget exactly, and maybe only on IE, but "only on IE" is enough). As I recall I eventually found archived comments complaining of the same problems, and a response basically saying "Fixing this is too hard, and since no one uses the feature anyway I/we aren't gonna bother." The inset idea is a typical brilliant one from you, but search the page source for link= to find the several other images in which I used the same technique -- each for a good reason, I think you'll see, and not all susceptible to the "inset" idea. Even if we can make imagemap work (and if you do, I have an entirely different place I'd want to use it!) I'll still be asking: what's wrong with a nice surprise which gives the reader everything he asked for, plus a little more he would have asked for had he known it was available? EEng (talk) 01:07, 8 December 2014 (UTC) How can I possibly be frustrated if "typical" and "brilliant" appear in the same sentence? We can live without imagemap, I think. I just tried it out because you mentioned it. I had a look at the other uses of |link=. Mostly, the thumbnail shows the main detail without background − the full picture is not really a surprise. In this case, though, we are rather more choosing a restricted peekhole because the reduced size of the full picture would be illegible, and the full picture looks very different. There is also the issue that many readers, I suspect, never bother to click through to the file page for every image, so there needs to be some clue here that it might be worth doing so. For these reasons I suggest that we use the image with the inset in the article, with the current |link= unchanged. This would mean that the thumbnail really does contain the full image that the reader sees when clicking through, thus a reasonably familiar user experience. If we do this, I will transfer the image with inset to commons. --Mirokado (talk) 22:26, 11 December 2014 (UTC) Yes, excellent. This way we don't even need imagemap. It's like the current setup, except as you say giving a hint to the reader of what he'll get when clicking. If it's not too much trouble, the inset has a tiny caption just below it that can never be legible -- can that be eliminated? Actually, can you move the inset "hard" left and "hard" to bottom i.e. +---------------------+
|	|	| +---------+-----------+ not +---------------------+
| |	| |

A8 Cavendish, Vermont 1869 Map

Extended content

This map constitutes original research and I've made mention of this before. The map in question indicates the town 21 years after the incident in question. The map as published in Macmillan does not provide the information or mark up in question. As result this image is not appropriate for Wikipedia because it represents a synthesis to produce original research. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:05, 7 September 2014 (UTC) As WP:OI says, Original images created by a Wikipedian are not considered original research, so long as they do not illustrate or introduce unpublished ideas or arguments, the core reason behind the NOR policy. The published information which is the basis for the annotation (i.e. the three letters/arrows) is explained on the image description page for the uncropped map [46] and also in a footnote to the map's caption [47] i.e. Macmillan gives the steps in setting a blast, the location and circumstances of the accident, and the location of Gage's lodgings and Harlow's home and surgery.[1]:23–9[6]:151-2[5]:A. Thoughts on this? As with the image links, I've put the map back so we (and others) can see what we're talking about. EEng (talk) 03:45, 8 September 2014 (UTC) You take from this source, we get that, but I still find it problematic that you use a much later map and proceed to mark it up. I think you are selectively reading again because WP:OR states: "Manipulated images should be prominently noted as such. Any manipulated image where the encyclopedic value is materially affected should be posted to Wikipedia:Files for deletion." I think using a decades late map that has no grounding in the situation at hand falls under "materially affected" and negatively impacts it. It also takes quite a bit of reading to understand where your map marker notes would be related - nor do you cite this clearly. Though instead of using the 1855 map, you opted for the 1869 map - bringing even more time between the events, needlessly. Or is it because you noted issues in the map - such as the river changing directions? The matter has become muddled by your actions and they do materially affect the article and readers understanding. Rather than make the matters clear, you've made it needlessly complex and difficult to understand even basic things about the image in question. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:11, 8 September 2014 (UTC) I used the 1865 map for the simple reason that the 1855 map doesn't include the area in which the accident occurred. You only partially quoted WP:OR, which actually says It is not acceptable for an editor to use photo manipulation to distort the facts or position illustrated by an image. Manipulated images should be prominently noted as such. Any manipulated image where the encyclopedic value is materially affected should be posted to Wikipedia:Files for deletion. The link (given in the original text at WP:OR) behind photo manipulation defines it as "the application of image editing techniques to photographs in order to create an illusion or deception after the original photographing took place." Adding letters and arrows to an old map to point out locations is nothing like that. EEng (talk) 05:40, 8 September 2014 (UTC) The facts of the image were already distorted without adding an extra decade and a half into the mix and requiring another document which is based off a map not drawn to scale to interpret and draw lines to a nearly unreadable document which provides no context or note of these facts. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:50, 8 September 2014 (UTC) I'm sorry, I don't understand. "requiring another document" -- what other document? What isn't drawn to scale? What context or notes should be provided? EEng (talk) 11:46, 8 September 2014 (UTC) Well, that honeymoon didn't last long. I just made an edit, in which I tried to make the date of the map, and the subsequent addition of the red markings, more explicit, so as to make it clear to the reader. I also made the wording about the accident site more cautious, so as to decrease any unverifiable inferences. I don't see an OR problem with using the image, so long as we don't label it misleadingly. With the changes I made, I'm not seeing any remaining problems. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:45, 8 September 2014 (UTC) Personally I think readers will know that the "locations added in red" are modern, without being told, but I'm fine with that. And I like switching from "possible accident sites" (i.e. it might be this specific site or that other specific site) to "region of the accident" (i.e. it was somewhere in this region). However, there's no "possible" about the region i.e. we can either say (A) The two possible accident sites or (A) Region of the accident site but not (A) Possible region of the accident site because there's no doubt this is the right region (only which of the two "cuttings" there is the right one). I've installed this with minor rewording. OK? EEng (talk) 22:44, 8 September 2014 (UTC) I agree, and I corrected it. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:51, 8 September 2014 (UTC) Looks like we're  Done with this one. EEng (talk) 03:42, 12 September 2014 (UTC) P.S. CG's attempt to have the map deleted from Commons failed. [48]. EEng (talk) 05:26, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

A9 Proving a negative

Extended content

This regards a recent edit [49] to the passage Macmillan's comprehensive survey of accounts of Gage (scientific and popular) found that they almost always distort and exaggerate his behavioral changes... which removed the word comprehensive. This is a delicate point and I want to come up with something everyone can live with. I think there are two questions here. First, Was Macmillan's analysis indeed comprehensive? No one who's been participating have any doubt on that, but just in case, open the collapse list. Extended content "first rate example of carefully done historical work" (Psychological Reports, 2001) "obstinately searched all possible sources. It seems very unlikely that anyone else could find a relevant piece not considered (Cortex, 2004) "fastidious archaeological removal of the layers of legend" (Lancet, 2001) "Even some of the most prestigious academic researchers have disseminated erroneous information..." (Neurosurgery Quarterly, 2002) "The definitive account. One of those rare occasions on which one can truly say that further research is not necessary." (Science, 2000) "Macmillan scoured all the sources and commentaries on the case and as far as material regarding Gage is concerned this must be a definitive work. (History of the Human Sciences, 2007) "Macmillan has shown that the record of how Phineas Gage’s character changed after the accident must be considered with caution..." (New England Journal of Medicine", 2004) Second, Do we need to say the analysis was comprehensive? IMO I think we do, because it the analysis assserts a negative, which requires extraordinary research; just saying Macmillan found no mention omits that such extraordinary research was in fact done. (Two examples from the collapse box: "Macmillan has obstinately searched all possible sources. It seems very unlikely that anyone else could find a relevant piece not considered"; "The definitive account. One of those rare occasions on which one can truly say that further research is not necessary.") Without such a clear statement, we get edit summaries such as this one: [50]. Actually, there's a third question: Do we need to include a quotation (such as the "further research is not necessary" -- above) supporting the comprehensiveness? I don't think the reader needs that. I had put it in a footnote to the article recently only because another editor had questioned the comprehensiveness -- in other words, the quotation was there for editors, not readers, and this discussion can take its place. So what I suggest is that the article say Macmillan's comprehensive analysis of accounts of Gage..., where [97][98][99] cite to a few of the sources supporting the comprehensiveness, but without quoting them. What do you think? EEng (talk) 03:45, 8 September 2014 (UTC) Just so we are clear: You are intent on having three references or a footnote linking to those three references not to support any direct or related information to Phineas Gage, but instead on supporting the description of Macmillan's analysis as "comprehensive"? It is statements like that which are brought low by the fact that Macmillan's actual text asserts a non-existent document concerning Gage's death that Macmillan personally examined? That said non-existent document, which lead to a major dispute, cannot be permitted a footnote or warning to readers consulting this comprehensive text? How does that make any sense? ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:25, 8 September 2014 (UTC) When a 500-page book has an error in relating a date on a document, for which the author issued a correction even before the book was released, that hardly casts doubt on the rest of that author's research. And the footnote [51] discussing the date of Gage's death explicitly points the reader to the book's "Corrections page". For those who are wondering, here's the correction we're talking about: p. 108, para 2: The year of Gage's death is 1860, but the only other date on the records is 23rd. May for the funeral/interment, and only Gray's Funeral Record gives 'epilepsy' as the cause of death. Shocking! There is no "non-existent document" involved and I have no idea what that is you're talking about. Anyway, do you have anything to say about my proposed wording? A statement like "No examples of X were found" doesn't mean much unless the reader is told whether the survey of sources was extremely complete, some kind of sample, or just a spot check. EEng (talk) 06:20, 8 September 2014 (UTC) I have nothing more to say to you about this because that major error exists and it is on that page. It specifically states: Despite the authority of Harlow's source, Phineas died in 1860, not 1861. No death notice appeared in a newspaper, and if a death certificate was issued it seems to be have been destroyed. What, then, grounds my certainty? Two documents that I have examined personally. First, the Internment Records of the Laurel Hill Cemetery give the date of death of "Phineas B. Gage" as May 20 1860 and the burial date as May 23, 1860. Second, N. Gray & Co.'s Funeral Record 1850 to 1862 for the Lone Mountain Cemetery, reproduced here as figure 6.4, also gives 23 May 1860 as the date of the funeral. Both give the cause of death as "epilepsy."[17] Macmillan 2000 clearly noted date of death as May 20, not May 21. Then later said that no such detailing exists - exactly why that needs to be footnoted. This is the type of thing is made all the worse by Macmillan's confidence in the matter. Both documents do not give the cause of death and the date of death is not listed on either source. This issue was discussed before. The text is misleading with the note stating "...as well as with Gage's age—​36 years—​as given in undertaker's records after his death on May 21, 1860." This does not explain the synthesis done and it reads that his date of death in the undertaker's records was May 21, 1860 when no date is given for his death in that record and that his birth date cannot be ascertained because age aspect for day is absent unlike others. Rather than explaining in a footnote the matter - here we are again. You are so selective and dismissive of your text's faults that it is impossible to work with you on meaningful changes based on errors or poor wording. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 15:42, 8 September 2014 (UTC) I've made some changes that I hope will clear up any confusion. [52] EEng (talk) 05:08, 10 September 2014 (UTC) I previously discussed the issue of "comprehensive" at Talk:Phineas Gage/Archive 6#Edit 589408098, and per what I said there, I pretty much agree with Chris on this one. EEng replied to me in the earlier talk that "comprehensive" simply described the nature of the family history analysis, and although I do not question that intent, I believe that the effect of the word, as it would be understood by our readers, is to sound WP:PEACOCKy about the source material. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:51, 8 September 2014 (UTC) Chris, we're falling into that old mode where as soon as there's a difference of opinion you ascribe dark motives -- You are intent on having ... You are so selective and dismissive ... -- and change the subject. We started talking about Gage's mental changes, and suddenly you're talking about the death date and some "nonexistent document", then without warning it's the birthdate. It's impossible to have a discussion like that. Tfish, with apologies, I realize I've been looking at this sideways, because the comprehensiveness on accounts of Gage in general isn't essential to proving the negative, only comprehensiveness on first-hand accounts. So I'm happy with the current Macmillan's survey of accounts of Gage, but with the suggestion that we change survey to analysis, since to some people survey = "small percentage sample". OK? EEng (talk) 04:13, 9 September 2014 (UTC) Seems EEng has gone and put words into my mouth again. Last time he called me a troll, sensing a pattern here. I'm removing the "comprehensive note" and if EEng is going to continue in this fashion then it seems remaking the entire article from scratch and moving to replace the current incarnation is going to be the most logical option for dealing with the issues. Considering the push back he makes over trivial matters like having three references in a footnote for a useless "comprehensive" claim of Macmillan's text and not allowing any discussion of Macmillan's errors. This article is so flawed and so terrible in so many aspects that either topic banning EEng or remaking the entire page will be the only way the problems can be resolved with appropriate effort to noise ratios. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:27, 9 September 2014 (UTC) This discussion is running downhill fast, and I'm not interested except to say that we are better off without "comprehensive". EEng, "analysis" is fine with me, thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:28, 9 September 2014 (UTC) EEng: I'm glad my layout edits were helpful, thanks. If I followed the most recent edits correctly, I think you changed "survey" to "analysis", but then changed it back again. I wonder if that was unintentional. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:58, 10 September 2014 (UTC)  Done, un- Done, re- Done. I think I developed the all-imgs-stacked-right format when there was significantly less text, so that alternating imgs left-right created many places where text was sandwiched between two images -- so many it was impossible to control images widths in such a way that the sandwiching isn't too narrow. Now, with more text, imgs can be spaced enough to avoid the sandwich, at least in some places. However, I recommend we not put too much effort into img placement and sizing until content issues are better settled, because the quantity of text in various sections can strongly affect img formatting. EEng (talk) 03:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

A10 Removed Note

Extended content

I removed this note because it is poor form to footnote a quote's reference to another quote with the quote and that quote's citation. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:21, 10 September 2014 (UTC) It's very common for a passage to carry a footnote which gives a citation plus additional information (whether quotations or other material) related to that passage. Nonetheless, as it happens I was just thinking earlier of moving the Van Horn quote into the main text, so I've done that. [53] If there's a concern about how a piece of content is presented, the issue should be raised here so a better presentation can be found, or a bold edit made improving the presentation, rather than the content being deleted outright. As explained at WP:PRESERVE, Do not remove information solely because it is poorly presented; instead, improve the presentation by rewriting the passage. EEng (talk) 05:08, 10 September 2014 (UTC) You've just actually made a better case for removing it because you've gone and made it a poorly flowing redundant paragraph that cannot keep from gushing. Considering your issue with images and quotes... paraphrasing is ideal. Also, in looking at the references you use - you've basically gone and made the article have even more issues.... ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:48, 10 September 2014 (UTC) For those who are wondering, this regards the following passage: The portraits reinforce the social recovery hypothesis already described. "That [Gage] was any form of vagrant following his injury is belied by these remarkable images", wrote Van Horn. "Although just one picture," Kean commented in reference to the first image, "it exploded the common image of Gage as a dirty, disheveled misfit. This Phineas was proud, well-dressed, and disarmingly handsome." That the portraits help falsify the old depiction of Gage is frequently commented on in both scientific and popular publications. I've added cites to two more just now, for a total of five (more could be easily added); to let two particularly well-phrased quotes represent all of this material seems to me entirely appropriate. I don't see how these quotations can be paraphrased without completely losing the point of including them in the first place -- they'd just become "and X and Y also said thing like that". EEng (talk) 21:33, 10 September 2014 (UTC) I've looked at this issue (not easy to follow), and I think that the way it is at this time, with the last paragraph of the Portraits section as it is, is good. I think these quotes are appropriate to have in the text of that paragraph, and I agree with EEng that the actual quotes improve the reader's understanding of the topic. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:13, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

And another thing, dagnabbit!

Re [54]. Tfish, you seem to have these periodic AGF lapses, in which you imply that I'm just stringing you along, pretending to indulge your concerns, and so on. I think you know that's not true, so please think twice in future before saying such things.

In this particular case, I really did first think this information worked best as a note [55], then really did realize that it makes sense in the main-text passage on lateralization of damage [56]. The fact that I teased you a bit, in my edit summary, about your hostility to notes, shouldn't throw you off center.

As to the material itself, I periodically get inquiries about Gage's handedness, for reasons I don't need to explain to you, so yes, I do think it belongs in the article. It is specialized material which (as seen) I thought would do best as a note, but I realized later that since the damage lateralization question is somewhat technical, it might fit in there as well. But if you really don't think it should be in the article at all, I can live with that, though I'm still puzzled why an essentially limitless amount of specialty material can't be accommodated in notes, outside the main text. EEng (talk) 04:35, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I've been thinking about what you've said. As you know, I watch this talk page and your user talk page, so I know that those inquiries about his handedness that you get are not being posted by Wikipedia readers on-Wiki. I'm pretty sure that I can accurately infer that these are people asking you in real life, because you are a person who knows an unusually large amount of information about Gage. And that's the thing, as I see it. Wikipedia is for a general readership. If it is also useful for academic specialists, that's great, but it is not intended to be, primarily, a resource for that purpose. Myself, in real life, I'm a person who knows an unusually large amount of information about certain areas of neuroscience. And in real life, people have asked me about those things, because I'm known as an expert. But I emphatically do not write content here in order to reflect my own research, or even to be comprehensive about the research areas in which I have expertise. We have neuroscience-related pages where I could easily write a ton of content about the intricacies of research on the topic, complete with detailed notes about the fine points of issues that are not resolved to my satisfaction and with every applicable source cited, and there would be some fellow neuroscientists who would actually find it interesting to read. But it would be undue weight and contrary to WP:NOT. And I don't do it. The fact that there are some people with specialized interests who ask a specialist certain questions in real life does not mean that Wikipedia serves its readers best by answering those questions here. It's the wrong criterion for inclusion of content. Wikipedia has defined itself as a tertiary source. Personally, stuff like hyphens are not particularly interesting to me. But what bothers me about both content and format (including sourcing) is that this page is set up like it's supposed to be a definitive place for specialists to look up current scholarship, instead of an encyclopedia page for general readers. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:08, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

By "periodically" I mean maybe a half-dozen inquiries in four years, mostly from highschoolers and undergrads -- apparently there's a much-copied assignment that requires them to find this out, or something. Anyway...

I think your idea about WP's audience is too narrow -- see WP:TECHNICAL#Audience, which in particular refers to three kinds of readers.

• The general reader has no advanced education in the topic's field, is largely unfamiliar with the topic itself, and may even be unsure what the topic is before reading.
• The knowledgeable reader has an education in the topic's field but wants to learn about the topic itself.
• The expert reader knows the topic but wants to learn more or be reminded about some fact, or is curious about Wikipedia's coverage.

You gotta read the whole thing, of course. The general reader has priority, but to the extent we can also serve the other two types (without significantly compromising the article's appeal to the general reader) I see no reason not to do that as well. How exactly to do that needs discussion, but can we agree on this principle?

At least once before you've referred to WP:NOT, and specifically the following points:

• 6. Textbooks and annotated texts. Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not a textbook. The purpose of Wikipedia is to present facts, not to teach subject matter. It is not appropriate to create or edit articles that read as textbooks, with leading questions and systematic problem solutions as examples. ...
• 7. Scientific journals and research papers. A Wikipedia article should not be presented on the assumption that the reader is well versed in the topic's field. Introductory language in the lead (and also maybe the initial sections) of the article should be written in plain terms and concepts that can be understood by any literate reader of Wikipedia without any knowledge in the given field before advancing to more detailed explanations of the topic. While wikilinks should be provided for advanced terms and concepts in that field, articles should be written on the assumption that the reader will not or cannot follow these links, instead attempting to infer their meaning from the text.
• 8. Academic language. Texts should be written for everyday readers, not just for academics. ...

But how do these apply here? Does the article read like a textbook, use advanced terms and concepts or academic language? Is it just the presence of the notes? If not, what? One or two examples, please!

EEng (talk) 01:02, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

One example would be your strong opinion that the page absolutely must provide sourcing individually for every single misattributed behavior. Another would be the way the page keeps presenting information in terms of how Macmillan et al. have analyzed information and come up with newer interpretations. Note "a" gives much detail to analysis of images. Note "b" gives much detail about how to figure out Gage's date of birth and middle initial. You asked for one or two, and this is already four, but I could potentially go on like this for almost every note.

Since you are a self-professed acolyte of John Stuart Mill's endorsement of being open to the other side, let me say that I find it tedious that every suggestion that I make about improving the page leads to a wall of text. I have this unpleasant feeling that you are going, now, to argue with me about each of the four things I just pointed out, how I am partly wrong about them, how they differ in some way from your reading of WP:NOT, and on and on. I get the feeling that, when you said the other day that you are happy to be found wrong, you left out the part about you never actually being wrong. I suspect that you never will agree with me about the proper scope and audience, no matter what I say. Please understand, that I meant what I said about my view of the way the page is written too much for specialists, and if need be, I will open one or more RfCs to determine what other editors have to say about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:56, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Sorry to disappoint you, but no wall of text will be forthcoming. Putting aside the sourcing for misattributed behaviors, and putting aside the bit about new interpretations -- am I correct that the remainder of your concerns about academic language (etc.) are only (or pretty much only) with respect to the notes, not the main text of the article? EEng (talk) 04:27, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Putting my concerns aside, what are my concerns? Amongst other things, I would indeed be interested in de-froufrou-ing the notes. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:48, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

You're having one of those AGF failures again. You mentioned three concerns two posts back:

1. My "strong opinion that the page absolutely must provide sourcing individually for every single misattributed behavior"

2. "the way the page keeps presenting information in terms of how Macmillan et al. have analyzed information "

3. 'Note "a" gives [etc etc]. Note "b" gives [etc etc]'

I simply wanted to clarify whether, other than (1) and (2), your concerns about "proper scope and audience" etc. are limited to the notes, and not the article's main text. That's not (as you imply) dismissing your concerns, so stop implying that I am. Now can you answer the question? EEng (talk) 03:49, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

From where I sit, I've been extending a lot more AGF to you than have most of the other editors who have expressed concerns to you about this page. You are very good at expressing yourself, so if you don't want me to misunderstand your intentions, then please be careful about how you say things. Putting aside the I think I understand your concerns about sourcing for misattributed behaviors, and putting aside and I think I also understand the bit about new interpretations -- am I correct that... Now to answer that question, I would say that my concerns are much more about the notes than about the main text (and you can see my discussion about Note b below, where I try to make it specific), but I don't see it as an absolute distinction, more like a quantitative one. In fact, when I attempted yesterday to edit the note on the page itself, and got totally messed up in spite of the fact that I am very much an experienced editor, it made me start to think very seriously about how the formatting and templates, in both the notes and the main text, make it incredibly difficult for me and for most editors to edit this page. As a step-by-step process however, I would be quite happy to, for now, put more effort into the notes than into the main text. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:28, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Notes

Using Note b as an example, I'll try to illustrate what I have in mind. Here is the note as it is now:

Macmillan[M]:14-17,31n5,490-1 discusses Gage's ancestry and what is and isn't known about his birth and early life. His parents were married April 27, 1823.

The birthdate July 9, 1823 (the only definite date given in any source) is from a Gage family genealogy;[4] Macmillan[M]:16 notes that though the genealogy gives no source, this date is consistent with agreement among contemporary sources[H1]:389[5][B1]:13[H]:4 that Gage was 25 years old on the date of his accident, as well as with his age (36 years) as given in undertaker's records after his death in May 1860.[M]:108-9

Possible homes in childhood and youth are Lebanon or nearby East Lebanon, Enfield, and/or Grafton (all in Grafton County, New Hampshire), though Harlow refers to Lebanon in particular as Gage's "native place"‍[H]:10 and "his home"‍[H]:12 (probably that of his parents),[M]:30 to which he returned ten weeks[M3]:C after his accident.

There is no doubt Gage's middle initial was P‍[H1]:389[B1]:13[H]:4[M]:490[M1]:839fig but there is nothing to indicate what the P stood for (though his paternal grandfather was also a Phineas and his brother Dexter's middle name was Pritchard).[M]:490 Gage's mother's first and middle names are variously given as Hannah or Hanna and Trussell, Trusel, or Trussel; her maiden name is variously spelled Swetland, Sweatland, or Sweetland.[M]:490

Here is a modest step in what I would consider to be the right direction:

There are gaps in what is known about Gage's birth and early life. His parents were married April 27, 1823.[M]:14-17,31n5,490-1

The birthdate July 9, 1823 is from a Gage family genealogy.[4]

Possible homes in childhood and youth are Lebanon or nearby East Lebanon, Enfield, and/or Grafton (all in Grafton County, New Hampshire).

Gage's middle initial was P‍[H1]:389[B1]:13[H]:4[M]:490[M1]:839fig but there is nothing to indicate what the P stood for. Gage's mother's first and middle names are variously given as Hannah or Hanna and Trussell, Trusel, or Trussel; her maiden name is variously spelled Swetland, Sweatland, or Sweetland.[M]:490

Here is a more extensive revision:

There are gaps in what is known about Gage's birth and early life.[M]:14-17,31n5,490-1

The birthdate July 9, 1823 is from a Gage family genealogy.[4]

Possible homes in childhood and youth are all in Grafton County, New Hampshire.

Gage's middle initial was P‍[H1]:389[B1]:13[H]:4[M]:490[M1]:839fig but there is nothing to indicate what the P stood for.

One could even delete the note in its entirety. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:25, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Disposition of behavior citations

This was originally part of this subsection, but it looks as if this issue will be easier to follow in its own level-2 section.

Relating to this article section and its references: Phineas Gage#Exaggeration and distortion of mental changes

--Mirokado (talk) 19:03, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

... please organize the cites so that those related to Behavior A are grouped together, then those for Behavior B, etc., so that the reader only has to look one place to find out about a given behavior. This is "almost" easy, as follows. In the current version [57], sources [37]-[60] are only used for this behavior stuff, so to a first approximation we can just organize them like this

Wife and children:

• {{cite book|author=Smith|year=1972}}
• {{cite book|author=Jones|year=1982}}

Sexuality:

• {{cite book|author=Anders|year=1999}}
• {{cite book|author=Billson|year=1998}}

where those items are what used to be in [37]-[60]. The flies-in-the-ointment are that

• [42], [49] are used in multiple behaviors, and
• [42], [1], [M], [M1] are used outside the behaviors list as well in it.

The trick, as I see it, is how to present those along with the simple, one-time {{cite book}} refs, in as consistent and understandable a way as possible. Good luck EEng (talk) 03:31, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

I've placed the references in five groups each with a headline. I think the next step is to decide which references are not needed in order to support the list in the article body. It will be easier to decide how to present the final set of references once we have pruned them. --Mirokado (talk) 22:36, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, and well done! My suggestion as to which references to delete would be to try to have one (or two) per asserted behavior, and to base it on two considerations: primacy and expediency. By primacy, I mean to keep whichever source said it first, while deleting sources that repeated what the first one said. By expediency, I mean that we can also be pragmatic about deleting the incomplete sources (like the book about Abnormal Behaviors, where we don't have all the citation information) or the ones using "sfn" (if EEng objects to using the sfn template in this way). There is room for some flexibility here; I don't mean that we have to be slavish about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:11, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Mirokado!

• Mirokado's result (mentioned just above) is here [58].
• Here [59] I've rearranged the cites to group them by behavior. What do you think?
• Here [60] Each behavior gets its own callout.

Thoughts? EEng (talk) 16:31, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

This is looking better than I had expected. It deals with one of the concerns I was planning to mention, which was the WP:UNDUE emphasis on these basically unsubstantiated attributions resulting from the subheadings in the reference list. Although there are a lot of callouts in the sentence, they are now each just a single number, which is a familiar idiom which someone can read through relatively comfortably. I'm quite happy to leave things more-or-less-as-they-are with that paragraph. We now have some patterns which can perhaps also help elsewhere in the article. --Mirokado (talk) 22:50, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, our work in recent weeks (the three of us) has been of immense benefit, I think. The cite/sourcing organization and presentation is really great! My aim is for the article to work on different levels for different readers -- casual, serious, and advanced -- without the content/features serving one level detracting from the experience of readers at the other levels. And I think we've now achieved that in the sourcing and citations. Thanks for fixing the cite letter thing! When you catch your breath can you take a look at #Bump? EEng (talk) 05:36, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Tfish -- you okay with this approach to the "ascribed behaviors" cites? EEng (talk) 00:33, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

<bumpity-bump-bump> EEng (talk) 08:07, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Monthly bump. EEng (talk) 03:18, 26 January 2015 (UTC)